I read a lot of books. However, I rarely finish reading one before I find something else more interesting to read. After 2+ years from when I started, I finally finished reading one. Have A Nice Day by Mick Foley. As many of you know, Mick Foley is the wrestler known as Mankind, Cactus Jack, or Dude Love. This book actually gave me a lot of insight into the wrestling business.

After reading about some of his wrestling stories, there was a match I had to see. So through the miracle of the internet, I acquired a bootleg DVD of the 1995 IWA King of the Deathmatch Tournament. While no match will ever top Mankind's Hell in a Cell encounter with the Undertaker, the work he does in the King of the Deathmatch Tourney is pretty good.

The IWA tournament takes place in an outdoor stadium in Japan somewhere. 8 hardcore wrestlers compete for one big trophy. The atmosphere was a little different from today's WWE events. There is no Jim Ross or anyone doing the play by play, so you just hear a lot of 'aaarg' and 'uughhh.' Even the 25,000 fans acted like it was a golf tournament, mostly silent with a few oohs and aahhs, with polite clapping when a guy kicks out of a pin attempt after a devestating move. (By the way, this dvd is in Japanese, except when Cactus Jack or one of the Americans speak, then there are Japanese subtitles, but it didn't really matter to me.)

Round One: Cactus Jack beats Terry Gordy in a barbed wire bat and big box of thumbtacks match.

Round Two: Cactus Jack beats a Japanese guy in a bed of nails and barbed wire board match.

Round 3: Cactus Jack beats the Hardcore Legend Terry Funk in a "no rope, barbed wire board, C4 explosives, exploding ring death match." That's quoted from the book and it was exactly as described. Instead of ring ropes, the ring was surrounded with barbed wire. They had boards of barbed wire laced with C4 explosives. And the ring, also laced with C4 would explode in 10 minutes. It wasn't as great of a match as I thought it woule be, since they were already beat up from the first 2 rounds. This is where the picture of Mick Foley holding up the trophy while his face is covered in dark red blood came from.


So now I can either read The Rock's book , finish my WWII book (on page 342 of 747), or pick one of the other selections that has made Amazon a few bucks over the years.
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