Countdown to Lockdown

Five things you didn't know about Mick Foley and/or pro wrestling:

1- Some of the "foreign objects" used in his career include C4 plastic explosive (yes, really) all the way down to a Leonard Cohen album.  Also yes, really. 

2- Foley and Kevin James (King of Queens, Pall Blart: Mall Cop) were on the same high school wrestling team. 

3- Foley, who once had his ear torn off during a match, walked away from an announcing job with WWE because he couldn't stand Vince McMahon yelling at him over the headset.  He lasted less than three months. 

4- On one of Foley's last days with WWE, a gospel choir was booked to sing "Amazing Grace" as a memorial to Vince McMahon, whose onscreen character Mr. McMahon had been "killed' via car bomb some weeks before.  This didn't happen, because that weekend, WWE wrestler Chris Benoit killed his son, wife, and finally himself.

5-Foley has recently offered cryptic criticisms of his perhaps soon-to-be former employer, TNA, for not taking advantage of Foley's considerable exposure on the Daily Show as Senior Asskicker. 

TNA pretended this never happened

First things first: yes, I am a wrestling fan.  Always have been, probably always will be. If you suddenly think less of me, fine.  But it's not changing anything.  Wrestling, to me and others, is misunderstood high art, an interactive, larger than life drama, where good confronts evil on the perfect stage. 

The problem with wrestling is the good is often hard to find amongst all the bad.  Raven, a wrestler whose career has crossed paths with Mick Foley more than once, told me during an interview "when wrestling is good, there's nothing better, but when wrestling is bad, there's nothing worse." 

Raven - a really great interview. Trust me.

By his own admission, Mick Foley's career has seen quite a few moments on either side of the spectrum. At his peak, wrestling as Cactus Jack and Mankind in the mid-to-late '90s, Foley was one of wrestling's artists, and forged a remarkable and unusual career even by the generous standards of pro wrestling, making a name for himself almost by sheer willpower. He literally went from barbed-wire death matches in half-full Japanese high school gymnasiums to sold-out US football stadiums in the space of a decade; a story anyone can marvel at. 

But that story was literally four memoirs ago.  His first book, Have a Nice Day, is well worth checking out.  But while Foley has lived and continues to live an extraordinary life, I'm not sure it warrants four autobiographies.  As a result, his latest work feels like a jumble. Countdown to Lockdown is essentially three books thrown into one.  The first documents his departure from Vince McMahon and WWE - not quite on bad terms, but tense.  The second recounts his preparation for a big pay-per-view match for his new employer, TNA Wrestling, against one of his first and most notable opponents on the national stage, Sting.  The third is essentially a verbal photo album of Foley's life; theme parks he's enjoyed, family stories, celebrity encounters, and lots and lots of Foley's charity work.

The big match TNA wanted you to pay for

The first two work fairly well.  Foley shies away from too much lurid detail - probably not to burn bridges - but you don't have to peer too deeply between the lines to discern that Vince McMahon is a hard guy to work for - impulsive, mercurial, and ludicrously demanding.

Wrestling fan or not, it's also interesting to see the difference between the two major companies (WWE and TNA) operate.  (TNA is far less polished.)  Foley's mental and physical preparation are also interesting, but I particularly enjoyed his discussion of the business end - the storytelling and pitch to get TV viewers to pay to see the big match at the end.

As Foley acknowledges, not nearly enough TNA fans did so. TNA consistently gets around 1.5 million TV viewers each week - very good for cable TV - but converts a paltry percentage of them into pay-per-view buyers, far less per capita than WWE or UFC.  This remains a headache for the still-young promotion, despite bringing in big names like Foley, Kurt Angle, and more recently, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. 

The book's third part, however, gets lost. As much as I like Tori Amos, I don't think meeting her warrants an entire chapter. Nor does what appears to have been a ten-minute conversation with Paul Wolfowitz.  And as laudable as Foley's charity work is, ten mentions of the child he sponsors in Sierra Leone would have sufficed.  (I lost count.) 

Countdown to Lockdown ends more or less the same way his first memoir did - with him winning the big match and that company's world title.  But it feels different, both as a reader and as a wrestling fan.  His first win, back in 1999, was unexpected. He was the deserving, hardworking underdog.  It's just not like that anymore, and his title win caused some grumbling by those who felt TNA would do better to showcase their younger, more athletic wrestlers.

Viewers were happy to see Benedick and Beatrice find love (and each other) at the end of Much Ado About Nothing.  But that's where it ends. If Much Ado was a weekly TV series, you'd want to see the happy couple cede the spotlight to Don Pedro or even Dogberry for a while.