Authors: Mick Foley
As Dusty had advised me, I never actually practiced those thoughts-I just kept them in my brain for future reference. The words usually went directly from my heart to my mouth, and the results the past year had been tremendous. But turning heel in a part of the country in which I had been loved for years was a difficult trick to pull off. I remembered what “Freebird” Michael Hayes had told me about being an effective heel. “In his mind, a heel has to feel his actions are justified. It doesn’t matter how far out his motives-as long as he feels he’s right!”
I had been thinking about psychology and criminal deviance-what makes a warped mind snap. Many of my favorite books were crime dramas, and I especially enjoyed reading about what traumatic event had set the wheels in motion. I liked to refer to Robert De Niro’s Max Cady in Cape Fear as my favorite heel. In many ways, he wasn’t a heel at all; he was a man who had been wronged and went about seeking his own form of vengeance. Max was tough, intense, and filled with testicular fortitude. The babyface of the movie, Nick Nolte, was wishy-washy and weak. My favorite scene in any movie (besides Reed Rothchild asking “How much ya squat?” in Boogie Nights) is when Nolte hires three men to rough up Cady and then hides behind a Dumpster to watch his plan unfold. Cady takes a hell of a beating at the hands of a baseball bat, a pipe, and a bicycle chain, but he makes a comeback nonetheless. As the heel stands bloody and battered and delivers the classic line “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” the babyface is breathless and cowering. The line between good and bad had never been so thin. I wanted to walk that line with Tommy Dreamer. All I needed was a reason.
I thought about the bloodthirsty ECW fans. I thought of how tough it was to please them and how important it was to Tommy to do so. I remembered a story about Tommy turning down a WCW offer because he wanted to be hardcore, and I wondered if maybe I should have shut my mouth and kept collecting my three grand a week. I looked at my arm, which was still raw, and the scars from my stitches that had just been removed. Then I thought about the monthsold sign in the stands, and how it had made my wife’s stomach turn. A lightbulb went on in my head. I had found my reason. Colette and the kids came with me to the cameraman’s house. I had been through hell and back and was planning on taking a small vacation to relax. Colette dropped me off at the house and took the kids to a nearby park. When she returned an hour later, I was soaked with sweat and in a state of exhaustion. I had also left some pretty heavy thoughts in my wake. I still consider one of them to be among the three best things I’ve ever done in the business.
August 1995-ECW Television Show Transcript
“I’m going to take you back to a very deciding point in my lifea time when I believed in something. A time when I thought that my face and my name made a difference. Do you remember the night, Tommy Dreamer, because it’s embedded in my skull, it’s embedded in my heart, and it’s embedded in every nightmare that I will ever have. As Terry Funk took a broken bottle and began slicing and dicing Cactus Jack, the pain was so much that, I’ll be honest with you, Tommy. The pain was so much that I wanted to say, ‘I quit, Terry Funk, I give, I wave the flag, and I’m a coward-just please don’t hurt me anymore.’ Then I saw my saving grace. You see, Tommy, I looked out in that audience, my adoring crowd, and I saw two simple words that changed my life. ‘Cane Dewey.’ Somebody had taken the time and the effort and the thought to make a sign that said, ‘Cane Dewey.’ And I saw other people around, as every moment in my life stopped and focused in on that sign and the pain that shot through my body became a distant memory-replaced by a thought which will be embedded in my skull until my dying day! Cane Dewey. Cane Dewey. Dewey Foley is a three-year-old little boy-you sick sons of bitches. You ripped out my heart, you ripped at my soul, you took everything I believed in, and you flushed it down the damn toilet. You flushed my heart-you flushed my soul-and now it sickens me to see other people making the same mistake. You see, Tommy Dreamer, I have to listen to my little boy say every day, ‘Daddy, I miss Georgia,’ and I say, ‘That’s too bad, Son, because your dad traded in the Victorian house for a sweatbox on Long Island. Your dad traded in a hundred-thousand dollar contract, guaranteed money, insurance, respect, and the name on the dotted line of the greatest man in the world-to work for a scumbag who operates out of a little pissant pawn shop in Philadelphia.’ You don’t expect me to be bitter? Tommy, when you open up your heart, when you open up your soul, and it gets shit on, it tends to make Jack a very mean boy. And so, I say to you-before I take these aggressions out on you, to look at your future and realize that the hardcore life is a lie, that these letters behind me are a blatant lie, that those fans who sit there and say, ‘He’s hardcore, he’s hardcore, he’s hardcore,’ wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire, you selfish son of a bitch! But I want you to understand, Tommy, though he’s hurt you time and time again, Raven wants you to understand that the hatred I have in here is not for you. No, no-far from it. You see, Tommy, I’m not doing this because I hate you-I love you, man! I only want the best for you-but when I hear that WCW called up your number and you said, ‘No thank you’-well, it makes my blood run cold. As cold as that night in the ECW arena. And so I got a moral obligation-you see, Tommy, I’m on the path of righteousness, and righteous men wield a lot of power. So if I’ve got to drag you by your face to that telephone and dial collect and say, ‘Hello, Eric, it’s me, Cactus, and though I know I’ve burned my bridge, and I’ll never be taken back with open arms-I’ve got a wrestler who would gladly trade in his ECW shirt for a pair of green suspenders.’ And Tommy, just think of that sound in your ear when Uncle Eric says, ‘Welcome home, Tommy Dreamer, welcome home.’”
The response to the interview was overwhelming. Many longtime fans thought it was the best interview of all time. More important, it was accomplishing its goal-to get Tommy over. Tommy was now seen as the underdog standing up for his hardcore beliefs against the evil empire (WCW) and its evil emperor (Bischoff). Bischoff was the perfect heel. ECW fans hated both WCW and the World Wrestling Federation, but at least they respected Vince. Bischoff was reprehensible. To them, Bischoff was nothing but a pretty boy whose goal in life was to lure away ECW talent with promises of big money and better recognition. Come to think of it, he did lure away a lot of ECW talent, and they did get big money and better recognition.
Paul E. loved it. That was part of the beauty of ECW-the freedom led to greater creativity. In my time there, I was free to speak about anything I wanted in any way I chose. I was even free to blast the company and Paul E. himself. Later, Vince McMahon would tolerate and then encourage the same behavior, but at the time, it was unusual.
The only casualty in all this was the poor sign guy. He took it hard and blamed himself. Stevie Richards saw him in the gym and said he was beside himself with guilt. “I thought he knew it was a joke,” he moped to Stevie. I eventually mended fences with the guy, but to this day, I don’t think he realizes that he actually did me a favor.
I knew I was on to something, and I wanted to keep the ball rolling. I needed more inspiration, and I thought of all the wrestlers who looked to me as their role model and had hurt themselves as a result. Actually, this is still happening, especially with the proliferation of backyard wrestling leagues. I guess because I got my big start by jumping off Danny Zucker’s roof, these kids look to me as some sort of guru. As an added bonus, they throw in barbed wire and thumbtacks to honor their hero. I got a letter yesterday from an aspiring wrestler who claimed he was ready to die for the World Wrestling Federation. He was eighteen and said I could recognize him on the videotape he sent me as the “one covered in blood.” I’m going to write him a letter back and tell him that I won’t even watch his tape until he finishes college.
Maybe I should make something clear to prospective wrestlers-promoters are not impressed by breaking tables, chair shots, and barbed wire. The secret is to learn the basics, develop a character, and work your ass off. Sure, I got my foot in the door by jumping off a roof, but it took me six years before I started outearning the guy who works the Slurpee machine at 7-Eleven. Besides, there are roof jumpers everywhere these days.
Nobody cares about wild moves these days-they care about the guys who do them. Otherwise, Papi Chulo would be on the cover of TV Guide instead of Steve Austin. The Undertaker gets more reaction by diving over the top rope twice a year than Taka Michinoku does doing a twisting sukahara every night. I myself get a better reaction by pulling a dirty sweat sock out of my shorts than I ever did by dropping elbows on the concrete. Also, with ultimate fighters, Olympic wrestlers, pro football players, and legitimate badasses becoming more and more prominent in the business, you really ought to have some amateur experience. As a general rule, the top guys hate “hardcore” wrestlers. If you show up in the World Wrestling Federation courtesy of a video full of broken tables and barbed wire, a guy like Ken Shamrock will send you back to your backyard with your ball bag in a sling. Trust me-go to college, learn the basics, and break a table after the fans have already started caring about you.
Hey, I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent, but I’ve got to keep my conscience clear.
I decided to keep up the pressure on Tommy-continuing to tell the truth about the ECW fans, apply even more WCW pressure, and up the moral ante. I liked the idea of being on a religious mission-after all, no one likes a zealot. I also wanted to give some historical background on my earlier hardcore ambitions. The interview I cut a few weeks later was right up there with “Cane Dewey.” It also showcased how surprisingly sexy I looked in black leather.
September 1995-ECW Television Show Interview
“You know I’d like to apologize for my behavior. I’m embarrassed, certainly I feel a little stupid about the way I acted on this show a few weeks ago. It’s just that I get a little emotional when I talk about wrestling, because wrestling’s been my livelihood for the past ten years. It’s enabled me to live out my childhood dream. So for me to come out on a show such as the ECW television program and badmouth the wrestlers there-well, I’m sorry. But I think that in order to understand what’s going around my head, you have to understand where I come from and what my goals were when I got into wrestling.
“See, back in 1985, there was a program called 20/20 that challenged the wrestling industry-which kind of portrayed it in a negative light. Tommy, if you’re listening, try to understand that I was about the biggest wrestling fan in the world. And for me to stand in front of that television set and see people running down a business that I loved and held dear-even though I knew very little about it … To see my friends laughing at me saying, ‘That’s what you want to get involved in?’ That night I went to bed not with visions of sugarplums dancing through my head, but of broken bones, of battered bodies and bloody corpses, saying to myself, ‘If it’s the last thing I do, if I have to hold myself up for a human sacrifice-the world will respect professional wrestling.’ Oh, and that dream came true-yes, I’ve sacrificed myself for the past ten years, leaving the better parts of my past lying on concrete floors from Africa, to Asia, to South America, to right in the middle of the ECW arena. And what’s it really done? Where have we really come to?
“Lying in a hospital bed in Munich, Germany-seeing my ear being thrown into a garbage can-not being able to take it on the trip back because I didn’t know the German word for ‘formaldehyde.’ And having a nurse walk into my room, looking at that piece of my body that’s lying at the bottom of the garbage, and saying, ‘Es ist alles schauspiel,’ which means ‘It’s all a big joke!’ Excuse me! I didn’t know you opened up the diseased lung of a smoker and said, ‘Oh, by golly, I thought smoking was supposed to be good for you!’ Do you open up Terry Funk’s nonfunctioning liver and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t know that four decades of heavy drinking took this kind of toll!’? [Not true, but poor Terry got a lot of sympathy for it.] So, if they show that much respect for other patients, what made me any different? Because I was a wrestler. And professional wrestling will never be respected, no matter how many teeth I lose, no matter how many ears I lose, no matter how many brain cells have to die. And so it comes down to the point where it’s just not worth it. It’s not worth it, and, Tommy Dreamer, you’ve got to start looking at this realistically.
“Wrestling is a way to make a living-nothing more and nothing less-and as long as it’s strictly business, well, you may as well be cuddled in the welcoming arms of World Championship Wrestling. Because ECW fans will be the death of you. You see, they realized, and they were smarter than any of us, that they rule ECW wrestling-not us. What happened, Tommy? You came back from All-Japan wrestling with your trunks and your boots and said, ‘By golly, I’m really going to wrestle.’ Did Giant Baba hand you a dozen eggs and say, ‘Here, crack these on Jumbo Tsuruta’s head’? You’re a disgrace to the profession, Tommy; you’re becoming a damn fool. And I can’t sit back and take it, because I’ve got a moral obligation. Tommy, try to understand I am but a fouled experiment in human sociology, and I can accept that. But never in my sickest dreams did I imagine that there would be other wrestlers taking dives onto concrete floors, committing human suicide on my behalf-like I’m the patron saint of all the sick sons of bitches. Is that all I stand for, Tommy? Is that all I stand for, to stand in an arena where J. T. Smith lands head first on the concrete and hears, the fans yell, ‘You fucked up, you fucked up?’ Well, fuck you. Who the hell do you think you are? We’re not a wrestling organization anymore-we’re the world’s damn biggest puppet show. I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk into an arena and let any of you call my match. One, two, three-jump. One, two, three-jump. Well not me, because I’m no body’s stooge, and Tommy Dreamer, if you had a little bit of pride, or a little bit of common sense, you’d understand that those people don’t love you-they laugh at you! You took some of the worst beatings the sport’s ever seen, and they still laughed in your face. And to think that I stood there with my arm around you and endorsed you, saying, ‘He’s hardcore, he’s hardcore, he’s hardcore.’ And for that I deserve to die a terrible, painful death, Tommy, because I feel responsible. And I go to bed at night, and I’m not sure where I’m going to spend my eternity. And you, Tommy, are my salvation. Because, by delivering you to a better organization, where you can be appreciated, loved, and held with just the littlest amount of respect in the Turner family, then maybe there’s a chance for me, too. Please, Tommy, for my sake, think it over, because a yes to Cactus Jack would mean a great deal to me-and a no-well, I’d have to take that as your putting a big A-OK stamp of approval on my eternal damnation! I’m counting on you, you selfish little prick. Don’t make me hurt you-because I can. Don’t make me do it, because if I do, with God as my witness, it won’t be in front of those little scumbags at the ECW arena-it’ll just be me and you, Tommy, and you won’t know when it’s coming, and you won’t know where. So unless you want to damn me to the depths of hell-answer my call and say, ‘Okay, Cactus, you win.’ I’ll put on the suspenders, I’ll groom that mustache, and I’ll call Uncle Eric and say, ‘Count me in.’ Because not only would you be doing yourself a big favor-not only would you be helping your life, you’d be saving mine. You’d be saving … mine.”