THE STONE COLD TRUTH (29 page)

Here’s Mick as Mankind going up against Stone Cold. One of the toughest human beings I know.

27
Mick Foley

F
or a while, Dude Love and then Mick Foley was my tag-team partner. When he wrestled as Mick Foley, he had this great gimmick. Mick had a little sock puppet on his hand, and “the puppet” would choke his opponents.

The first time I saw Mick Foley was in the mid-to-late eighties, when he was wrestling as Cactus Jack Manson. It was usually the Von Erichs and the Freebirds who drew me to the Dallas Sportatorium, but this time it was Cactus Jack.

His promo was amazing. When they showed the footage of Cactus Jack coming to town, I was thinking, Damn, this sumbitch is crazy! So even before I saw him wrestle, I became a total mark for his stuff. And of course, I had to go down to the Sportatorium to see him, because his match wasn’t going to be televised.

First I saw the Freebirds and the Von Erichs battle, and the Freebirds cheated and won that night. Great heat! Finally it was time for the main event and the TV cameras had been turned off.

Cactus Jack Manson came out with that wild hair, and he’s dropping elbows off the apron onto the floor, killing guys. I took notice of him back then. When I worked in the Sportatorium, Cactus Jack had already left for WCW. Then when I came to WCW, I got to know Mick quite a bit. And later on, we worked together at WWE.

Mick has never been a great athlete, but he’s always had his style and understood crowd psychology. That came out in his promos, which were always riveting, and it came out in his work in the ring.

I remember when I first went to ECW and they gave me the opportunity to start talking a little bit. It was Paul Heyman who gave me my platform about getting fired by WCW. But when it came to how to express myself, I always looked to Mick’s example.

Mick was a guy who was always on time, always there, a guy who worked hard and didn’t complain about a damn thing. And anytime you got him in the ring, he gave you absolutely everything he had. That’s what I remember about him.

He’s also one of the smartest guys in the business. If I have a conversation going, or a question about something in the ring, or even a movie, I’d always go to Mick for his opinion on the matter.

Of course, Mick and I have similar twisted senses of humor. And man, we used to have so much fun. We used to travel together when we were with WCW, and he was as cheap as I was. Maybe more so. Sometimes we’d travel with Diamond Dallas Page. When we’d travel with Page, we’d just sit there and rib him to death, to see who could crack him first.

My tag team partner Mick as Dude Love.

Let’s just say that DDP might not do too well under intense interrogation. Page is easily cracked.

I always liked working with Mick. It didn’t matter which of his characters he was using at the time—Cactus Jack, Dude Love, Mankind or Mick Foley. He was so intelligent; he had four different characters wrapped up in one body. And each one had his own signature stuff, and he could keep them separated in his mind.

Now, if he wanted to interplay all of them he could do that too. But for a long time he kept it all separate.

In WWE, Mick (who was Dude Love at the time) and I were tag champs together. I loved the deal where I was doing the “DTA” (Don’t
Trust Anyone) gimmick, insisting on being a loner, and this guy wanted to be my tag partner.

I gave him the Stone Cold Stunner and told him, “DTA—you stupid piece of trash! Don’t ever trust anybody! You ain’t gonna be my partner, never! ’Cause you are a long-haired freak and you suck!”

But after enough of him badgering me, I let him be my partner. That was fun. It made no sense, but it was fun.

It’s hard for me to say, but I’d guess that Mick is probably done with wrestling at this point. He’s been enjoying his time as a family man, writing and all that stuff, which is good. But that guy—man, you never can tell. I know he probably hurts a lot, but if anybody can pull off a comeback, Mick can.

Thrifty Mick Foley is a helluva talent.

28
Getting Paid to Drink Beer and Crush Cars

I
used to tell my buddies near the end of my wrestling career that I was drinking beer for a living and wrestling on the side. I cannot remember where the beer first made its appearance. Mark Yeaton, who works on our ring crew, is my designated “beer tosser.” I’m pretty good at catching those cans when he tosses them right, which Mark does more often than not.

The beer deal was the end of my act. It was how I finished what I was doing in the ring. Once fans saw the beer-drinking finale, they knew the show was over.

It helped me bond with the crowd. And when I did it with other talent, like The Rock or Vince, it helped me bond with
them.
Of course, sometimes I stunned them afterward, but that was the beauty of Stone Cold.

Some of my favorite over-the-top bits on
Raw
involved Stone Cold driving and smashing different kinds of vehicles. The fans remember those and always ask me about them. They were pretty wild television, especially when you consider they were on a live show.

Probably the one that started the trend was when I filled up Mr. McMahon’s nice classic Corvette with tons of fresh concrete from a cement truck at Nassau Coliseum. I was looking for major ways to PO Vince and figured this might do it.

There aren’t too many times when you get to wreck a Corvette on purpose. When I saw that car, I said I would just as soon take it home as destroy it. It was a nice car that WWE had purchased out of the newspaper for this stunt.

This was live TV, and I’d never driven a cement truck before. There was a mechanism you had to use, with buttons and levers to make the chute work and the cement go. I was out there learning how to drive it just twenty minutes before the show started.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong on live TV, but this little piece of business turned out to be a blast! The window glass of the Corvette shattered as the car filled up to the top with cement, so that was cool. Then it was running out the windows. That car must weigh ten tons or more now! They still have it and haul it around the country to each
WrestleMania
for the fans to see.