Authors: Mick Foley
Once back from the break, the beating continued until a strange figure suddenly appeared on the huge “Titantron” video screen. “Oww! Steve-O,” the figure yelled, “looks like you could use a little help, like maybe a tag team partner.” At this point the action in the ring stopped, and all the men stared in disbelief at this guy on the screen. He was dressed in a tie-dyed shirt and bandanna and looked to be the figure of “cool,” even if his mirrored shades were slipping due to the lack of an ear to support them. The cool guy continued his mesmerizing jive talk by yelling, “Now Steve-O, I don’t blame you for not wanting to team with that scraggy-looking Mankind, but you never said nothin’ about teaming up with the hippest cat in the land. Yo, Steve-O, it’s me-Dude Love, and I’m coming to save the day. Oww. Have mercy!”
The crowd roared at the mention of the Dude and roared even louder when the Dude came strutting down the ramp. All three guys in the ring were great at expressing their shock, with Austin in particular looking like he was looking at the “biggest dork in the land.” Before the Dude could get to the ring, however, the champions jumped Austin, and the Dude had to wait anxiously in the neutral corner. Finally, the champs screwed up just enough to allow Austin to tag the Dude. The Loved One was a house on fire as he tore into his adversaries with hokey chops and a variety of weak-looking offensive maneuvers. Finally, the Dude saw his opening and caught Davey Boy with the tie-dyed mandible claw, which would briefly be known as the Love Handle. After this match, it was decided to leave the claw to Mankind in order to accentuate the disparity of the two characters. Davey struggled until Owen came off the top rope with a dropkick that floored the Dude. While the ref was putting Owen out, Steve-0 reentered the fracas and caught Bulldog with a mighty Stone Cold Stunner-his patented finishing move. Davey went down, and the referee turned around just in time to see the Dude making the cover. One, two, three-we had new champions. The place erupted as the strain of “Dude Love, Dude Love Baby” had the crowd dancing in the aisles. Two paid models, oops, I mean two Dude Love groupies, couldn’t take it anymore and hopped the guard rail so that they could get down and boogie with this “safe sex symbol.” Austin barged in and began dancing with us, showing his fellow Texans some intricate break dancing moves not seen since that particular form of entertainment disappeared ten years earlier. No, he didn’t, but he did hand the Dude a tag team belt and shake his hand before leaving the happy threesome to dance the show off the air.
I was elated backstage. Vince had single-handedly made this dream come true. It didn’t matter that the Dude couldn’t dance a lick or that his trunks were falling down to the point where he almost looked like the “hippest plumber in the land.” The Dude was a breath of fresh air. As Vince himself put it a week later, after surveying fan’s opinions, the Dude makes people “feel good about themselves.”
For a while that summer, I led a dual existence as Mankind and Dude Love-even to the point of appearing on the same show as both guys at different times. In a few matches with Triple H, I started the match as the Dude, only to be beaten all the way up the aisle. While Helmsley celebrated, Mankind would suddenly emerge and continue the battle. Ironically, it was during the Mankind match with Helmsley that Dude Love would have his finest moments.
Summerslam took place in the Continental Meadowlands Arena on July 24, 1997. Mankind was scheduled to take on HHH in a steel cage match to settle their lingering feud. I had just returned from Santa’s Village in New Hampshire and as usual found that the combination of White Mountains Christmas memories and harrowing trips down the Yule log flume had me ready for action. As a general rule, I tend to suck big-time inside a cage, but this match was memorable.
We went at it at a good pace for several minutes, before Triple H took over. At one point, he rammed my head ten unanswered times into the blue steel bars. Even though I tried to absorb the impact with my shoulder and chest, I could feel my noggin bounce against the steel about half of the time and woke up the next morning with the lumps to prove it. Unfortunately, that would be far from my worst pain of the night.
As things looked their worst for Mankind, Chyna hurled a steel chair over the top of the cage and then climbed partway up the bars to shout encouragement. Hunter went for his patented “pedigree,” which, if successful, would have planted my head firmly on the steel chair. In reality, the “pedigree” was a great-looking move that did carry quite a bit of risk with it. I was able to sweep his legs to counter the move and then, using my knees as a type of fulcrum on his ass, was able to drop backward and slingshot him into the bars where Chyna was standing. The treacherous twosome collided, and the pop was monumental, to the point of being almost Road Warrior-ish, as Chyna flew to the floor below.
Victory was within my grasp. All I had to do was get through the door and touch the floor to be the winner. In this type of cage match, the winner is the first man to climb over the top or through the door and touch the ground. I began crawling for the door but was well aware of what was waiting for me when I got there. At two hundred muscled pounds, Joanie Lauer was as strong as many of the men in the Federation, and actually stronger than the guy whose book you’re reading. When she came to the company, many of the men had been hesitant to let a woman show them up-or as former intercontinental champion Ahmed Johnson had so eloquently put it, “Ain’t gonna let no bitch hit me.” Apparently, I was a little more secure in my manhood and as a result had been power-slammed, punched, kicked, suplexed, and ballshot by the “ninth wonder of the world.” None of that, however, could have prepared me for the pain that I was about to feel.
As I stuck my head through the bars, Chyna made her move. If anyone was at fault for what happened next, I was, because I made my head such a wide-open target. Chyna was merely swinging the door as hard as she could, which is how she knew I insisted on things being done. Maybe I should have tried what many believe is the whole idea behind wrestling anyway-faking it. Because the pain that I felt when Chyna slammed the heavy steel bar door on my head was unbearable. I know that I mentioned earlier my torn abdominal muscle as my most painful injury, but this one was close. It hurt so bad that I didn’t even hold my head-1 held my shoulder. Pain was shooting all the way down my arm, and I lay still for several moments. At first I thought there was no way I could continue, but then I sadly realized that this was Summers/am, and I had one big move still left in me. Somehow, as Triple H made his move, I was able to duck and catch him with a DDT on the steel chair. It was time for the past to look me directly in the eye.
I got up and started to scale the cage. When I reached the apex, Hunter still had not moved. The match was all but over. As I began to climb down to certain victory, the pop was deafening. So loud was it that I temporarily looked around to see if Hegstrand was there. I was literally three feet from victory when I was overcome by a memory, a memory of Madison Square Garden and Jimmy Snuka and the leap that had changed my life. All of a sudden my next move was clear-I too was going to fly off the top of the cage. I stopped my downward descent and looked up. It seemed as if the crowd could read my mind. I took off my Mankind mask and threw it into the ring. I didn’t need it anymore because I wasn’t Mankind anymore that night: I was Dude Love, and the Continental Arena had suddenly become Danny Zucker’s backyard. With each step up the blue bars, the noise grew in volume. When I got to the top, the sound was louder than anything I’d been a part of. I tore open my shirt to reveal my old Dude Love red heart tattoo, flashed the Jimmy Snuka “I love you” sign, and sailed majestically into the New Jersey arena air. Wham! I landed hard on Hunter with an impact that jolted both of our bodies. It was, at that point, the greatest single moment in my career.
I still had a match to win, though. After a few moments of basking in the adulation of the crowd, I crawled to the bars and started to climb. Sensing defeat, Chyna climbed in to help her man. As I climbed, she helped, and as she helped, I climbed, until it was a near dead heat to see who would reach the floor first-Hunter being dragged through the door, or the Dude over the top. Just as things looked their worst, the Dude snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat by dropping the last five feet to the floor. Hunter touched down a split second later, but the results were already in. The Dude had won it. The match, however, had taken its toll on both men, and we lay momentarily motionless. Until the music played.
Upon hearing the beat and the faux Bee Gees groove, it seemed as if the Dude’s boots had a life of their own. In a scene taken right from The jerk, where Steve Martin’s Navin Johnson learns he has rhythm, the Dude’s toes started tapping. The melody must have been infectious, because soon his whole body was moving. Even though badly wounded from Chyna’s cranium-crushing cage concussion, the Dude somehow summoned the guts, the pride, and the testicular fortitude to strut out of the Continental Arena. I described it as my “mangled, twisted strut,” Hunter later said it looked pretty much like my everyday walk.
I’ve got to admit to taking some creative liberties with the story I have just written. In truth, the tattoo was almost invisible, as it became smudged during the match, and I also was so afraid of falling when I got to the top that I actually flew from the bar one below the top. The rest of the description is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth-so help me Dude.
Unfortunately, later that same evening, Steve Austin was badly injured as a result of a ring accident with Owen Hart. The move, an inverted piledriver, saw Austin land squarely on his head and left him unable to move for the next few minutes. It was a truly scary moment that put Austin out of action for several months, but that ironically helped his career reach even greater heights. My own injury from the cage door would affect my neck for several months, but obviously not to the extent that Austin’s injury affected him.
The next evening, the Dude squared off with Owen for a match that was memorable mainly for the arrival of the Dudettes to congratulate their man on a hard-fought victory. Actually, the Dudettes in this case were our seamstress, Julie, and a hot chick named Colette, who also happens to be my lovely wife. Given her moment in the spotlight, things very nearly got X-rated, as my wife clearly appeared to be attacking her somewhat embarrassed man on national television. But hey, what the hell, after being alone with the kids 250 days a year, she deserved a little release.
Also, I need to correct a misconception. After the airing of the match, a story circulated that I was actively trying to secure a role for my wife with the company. Actually, the truth is a little tamer. She and the kids had been traveling with me since our Santa’s Village vacation. She was asked by one of the agents if she wanted to be on television that night, and she said sure. We both had fun, and I thought my wife looked truly beautiful on the screen.
With Austin out, the Dude embarked on a brutal tour of revenge with Owen Hart. Actually, it may have been brutal, but that was mostly on the fans who had to watch them. I myself was able to heal my body, and had a great time taking part in some of Owen Hart’s classic “bad” matches.
As already mentioned, the “Love Handle” was taken away from the Dude to clearly set him apart from Mankind. I began to think about what other lengths I could go to to establish this character. I decided to make the Dude somewhat less imposing than Mankind. Gone was the aggression and tenacity, to be replaced instead by some of the worst-looking offense this side of Baron Sikluna. Weak chops replaced stiff forearms, and on the speaking side of things, Mankind’s deranged philosophical shriekings yielded to worn-out seventies cliches. In many ways, I just ripped off Diamond Dallas Page, if not in word, then at least in spirit. I also took a look at the World Wrestling Federation roster and saw that it was filled with legitimate tough guys. The Dude, I decided, needed to be the antithesis of tough. He had the market cornered on “goofy” and took full advantage. In everything the Dude took part in-from his “so bad it was good” entrance video to developing the worst finish in the history of the business, the Dude embodied nerdyness and nincompoopery. The fans loved it.
In the bitter feud with the two-time Slammy Award-winning Hart, the Dude was not afraid to get in touch with his cowardly side either. Unlike other wrestlers, especially Mankind, who were stoic and heroic when it came to absorbing punishment, the Dude was not shy in admitting how little he cared for even the slightest bit of bodily harm. A match in Washington, D.C., at the end of August stood out as special for a few reasons. First, it was the advent of the microphone “sell spot.” I was on the house mike shucking and jiving with the capital city fans when the devious Hart jumped me from behind, with absolutely no provocation. With microphone in hand, I strayed from the standard wrestling protocol of macho grunts and groans and replaced them with cries of terror and pleas for mercy. “Oh! God! No, please! Oh, it hurts! Oh, the pain, the pain, please stop! Oh, God, you’re killing me!” The Dude was really wimping out, but Owen made the mistake of turning his back and addressing his fans, or “Love children,” as I liked to call them. When he turned around, the Dude had somehow found the will to continue. He went at Owen as Owen went “Ooh, ah, ooh, ah” into the microphone. The Dude then wrapped the microphone cable around his adversary’s trachea and reared back on these deadly reins. All of a sudden, I heard a voice over the public address system. It was Owen at his hokiest. “1, huh, huh, can’t, huh, huh, breathe.” I had to cover my face to keep from laughing.
After several more dreadful minutes that would have had Bill Watts turning blue, Owen slipped up, and the Dude took full advantage. Dude went to a corner and ala Shawn Michaels, began stomping his foot. This stomp usually signaled that Michaels’s trademark finish “sweet chin music” was on tap. Sweet chin music was a devastating sidekick to the jaw that had helped Shawn become one of the most popular players in the game. The crowd knew, however, that what the Dude had on tap was even more devastating. As Owen turned, the Dude stopped stomping and instead swooped in for the kill like a toothless, one-eared 300-pound bird of prey. The kick was devastating not so much for its power but for its precision, as the point of contact was made exactly three and three-eighths inches above the anklebone. “Sweet shin music” had just rocked the D.C. crowd. Owen gamely hobbled around, but it was too late-the Dude double underhooked him for the DDT and the one, two, three.