Countdown to Lockdown by Mick Foley

Author:Mick Foley [FOLEY, MICK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO053000
ISBN: 9780446574068
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2011-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

COUNTDOWN TO LOCKDOWN: 10 DAYS

April 9, 2009

Williamsburg, Virginia

11:25 p.m.

It would have been so cool to see Impact tonight, with Hughie (or at least his photo) making his big national debut. But alas, the Great Wolf Lodge only gets twenty or so stations, so we carried on as best we could, watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop on PPV to cushion us from the disappointment of the missing Spike channel.

I know I name-dropped Kevin James a couple of times in Hardcore Diaries, but this Mall Cop thing was so huge that I figure I might as well get a little more mileage out of my high school and college association with the man who breathed life into Paul Blart.

My son Dewey asked me what Kevin was like back in high school, wondering if he was a lot like the hapless but likable losers he plays so well on-screen.

I laughed. “Actually, he was kind of a stud back then,” I said. “He was the star of the football team, and only one of two guys who could bench-press three hundred pounds in high school.”

Just in case you were wondering, I was not the other guy. Definitely not.

Which actually got me thinking about my high school wrestling days, including the question: What the heck was I thinking going out for a team on which Kevin, the guy with the 300-pound bench, was already penciled in as the top heavyweight?

Actually, I think Kevin was going to be our go-to guy at 275, one of the guys who could wrestle at 215, but put away some big meals later in the season to go into the county tournament at the higher weight. Sometimes a really good athlete could do very well for themselves at 275, making up for lack of experience with power and attitude.

So I went out for the team on a whim, convinced by my buddy John McNulty that I could get in better shape for lacrosse—my real sport—by wrestling, as opposed to embarrassing myself at Winter Track.

I immediately became the number three heavyweight behind Kevin and Gus Johnson, the only other kid at Ward Melville High School with a tattoo on his bicep, this one some kind of lion. Back then, tattoos on a high schooler were so rare that their appearance alone could sometimes provide a distinct psychological edge on the mat. Of course, a tattoo hidden on a hip, inked solely to impress Diane Bentley, provided no advantage whatsoever.

By the second or third meet of the season, Johnson was history, after a practice-halting F-bomb directed at Patriots coach Jim McGonigle. Coach McGonigle, having dealt leukemia a serious butt kicking in 1978, wasn’t about to let some punk kid with a tattoo drop an unanswered F-bomb in his gym. So, McGonigle, with his classic New England accent, dropped one of his own, and we all got back to practice as if nothing had changed. Oh, but something had changed. I was no longer the third-string heavyweight. Nope, now I was the second-string heavyweight.

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