The Hardcore Diaries by Mick Foley
Before I begin, I need to mention that our good friends over at Simon & Schuster have a contest going on over at simonsays.com. Click the link and check it out. 10 winners get signed copies of this book. The grand prize winner gets a phone call from the Mickster himself. Enter by May 13.
You get the sense from reading Mick Foley’s latest novel The Hardcore Diaries that this might be his swan song in both literature and sports entertainment. Unlike his past nonfiction books that were either autobiographical (Have a Nice Day) or opinionated (Foley Is Good), this book is kind of like a concept album. Foley says that the central idea of his book is to show behind the scenes how a wrestling storyline plays out from the pitch to the final product. The undercurrent is that Mick is making a simultaneous comeback in both the literary and sports entertainment worlds and trying to regain his passion for each in the process. Unfortunately, you don’t really see that passion, and the effect is noticeable.
For one thing, the book is truly organized like a diary with short chapters introducing two or three days worth of diary entries. And, yes, it’s a diary, so you generally expect that the author will take license to cover a wide variety of topics within one setting. The problem is that Foley often abuses that license to belt out jarring shifts in the subject and engage in long streams of consciousness that really don’t work well when you read them. For example, early in the book, he talks about Melina, but then goes on a 4-page detour about a charity he’s involved with called “Abilities”. When he finally gets back to the original story, you really feel like he’s starting to go all over the place. I favored a structure he started using later in the book where he would introduce a chapter with a flashback and then cut to a few diary entries from the present. It reminded me of watching “Lost”.
Another thing I found troublesome was the fact that there was a lot of stuff taken out of context that aren’t really explained. I found that interesting because he mentions later in the book that he got a lot of mail from parents of kids who had bought his earlier paperbacks and had simply picked up the book to find out what they were reading. Most of those new readers complained that he would make references to people and events that he assumed wrestling fans already knew about. Mick kind of apologized in this book for doing that, but then he went and proceeded to do it again in this book anyway. One instance of this early in the book were a direct statement to Vince McMahon that colon cancer is serious without referencing McMahon’s skit about Jim Ross on Raw with Dr. Heiney.
That’s not the only one: Foley refers to the love triangle between Edge, Lita, and Matt Hardy without going into details. I know he probably feels it’s not his place to discuss it, but why allude to it without going into details? Not only that, but he’s candid about some statements in his book and then gets secretive about others. For example, he made some slightly unfavorable comments about Shawn Michaels and Triple H, but then later on he talks about “the guys” but never names who they were. Do Michaels and Hunter not get free passes because they’re so high up the card?
There are also the obligatory references to Al Snow and Test (which aren’t really explained in the book either, so read the old ones if you want to know what’s going on there). Foley makes an ironic comparison when complaining that he can’t get Test’s number out of his cell phone. He stated that Test always seems to keep coming back. Too true (and now he’s gone again).
I don’t want to portray this as a completely horrible book, because there’s actually a lot more good in it than bad. For one thing, Mick is incredibly open about his opinions on the business. He talks about why it is stupid to ruin your opponents in your promos and try to make them look weak. If they put you over, then it looks like you beat a nobody, because after all, you said so. If you put them over, then it makes you look like you really suck, because you couldn’t even beat the guy that you yourself said was terrible. Mick says he really tried to make his opponents look really good in his promos and always built them up to be some huge challenge.
Foley also offers up a few classic promos, and at one point even analyzed the anatomy of a promo. As he goes through a promo with Terry Funk in preparation for their 6-man tag team match at last year’s ECW One Night Stand, Foley mentions how he’s trying to control the psychology of the crowd. He later revisits his ideas for a good promo by saying that you “have to build [your opponents] up before you tear them down.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Foley book without him name-dropping left and right. He mentions how he’s friends with Dee Snider and called in a favor to him to visit a young man in a hospital. He also shows a picture of him standing next to Kevin James from “The King of Queens” in their high school wrestling picture. There was also a hilarious reference to Iron Mike Sharpe and some of his idiosyncrasies. The best one, though, was when the porn star Janine Lindemulder told Foley at a convention that she doesn’t let her son watch WWE because D-Generation used to do the “Suck it” gimmick. In response, he told Janine that he also doesn’t let his son watch her either. He also mentions a story about Burt Ward and Adam West from the Batman show that is particularly funny, but I won’t ruin it.
Naptown itself even makes an appearance in the book when Mick talks about staying at a wrestler’s house here in Indy and then finding out later that the guy’s girlfriend was a crack dealer with several clients visiting at all hours of the day. Nice to see my homies here in town representing…
Wrestling fans will find two main points of interest in this book. One is that Foley criticizes WWE’s creative team quite frequently for being too conservative and not taking chances. He mentions several battles with the creative team throughout over his ECW storyline. He paints them as people who have no creativity, go through phases where they are either heavy on wrestling, promos, or comedy. They are also seen as a group that has no foresight on where they want a story to go and where they want the story to jump off to when they get to the end. He also mentions the overscripting of shows and how wrestlers are under more pressure to stay under their time limits. You never heard about things like that in the days of the Attitude era when they were making money hand over fist or whether or not they had to comply with certain language standards. But now, from this insider’s look, WWE’s post-WCW look seems very stiff and staid.
The other main point of interest is one that is very sad, but I think those that have worked in the business know this. He mentions that there are not many true friends in wrestling. Although he admits that he doesn’t have much time to call the boys like he should, he also says that not many of them keep in touch with him either. Not only that, but he let loose on his real opinion of Paul Heyman after Paul E told Mick that his stay in WWE after ECW was only going to lead to a dead end. It’s at this point that Mick is kind of critical of the ECW fan base that seemed more interested in pointing out a wrestler’s faults than being concerned about their safety in putting their bodies through meat grinders in order to entertain those ungrateful people.
There is a lot of sadness in this book. Not only is Mick looking at the business as sort of having left him behind, but even though he’s barely 40 years old, he acts like an old man and appears to have the health of one too. He talks about how Terry Funk’s age is catching up to him as well. Foley goes through a litany of physical problems he is now suffering with his back and his knees. At one point, Mick even talks about the embarrassment of having to take some pain medication, which is a chilling thought when you consider the deaths of so many wrestlers related to that and to Kurt Angle’s dismissal based on his addiction. You really get the sense that Mick shouldn’t have been wrestling last year and that he probably shouldn’t ever wrestle again.
You also get the sense that Mick is trying to regain lost literary glory. He discusses the disappointing commercial success of his fictional novels Tietam Brown and Scooter. At one point, he actually acknowledges that he’s not a writer, but a wrestler who writes, and you really get the feeling that he’s unhappy to admit that.
I didn’t enjoy The Hardcore Diaries as much as I enjoyed Foley’s previous works. However, I think all wrestling fans will enjoy reading this book, as Foley does give a unique perspective on the WWE’s new corporate culture. Now that the company has no real national competition anymore, they no longer look like the innovative company that got them back on top for good. Foley does an excellent job of conveying that on this trip down the road, even if it seems like he makes a stops at every rest area and tourist trap along the way.
