Mick Foley Blogs

MY SARAYA

Wrestling sometimes seems like a giant extended, often dysfunctional family to me. There were times during my WCW and WWE runs that I spent more time with my travel mates than I did my own family. The term “brothers of the ring” is more than just a catchy phrase; it is genuine term for people you grow so close to over time, they really do feel like family. But like family, we sometimes drift in an out of each others lives, meeting up for an occasional bro-hug and a few minutes of conversation before going our separate ways. It doesn’t make the time shared any less meaningful; it just means that friendships change over time, shared interests wane, and often times different paths are chosen that can lead us down separate paths on the journey of life.

Conversely, however, there are some members of this extended family, that overtime, grow from distant relatives – like fourth cousins twice removed – to extremely close friends, almost siblings. Becky Lynch sometimes feels almost like a daughter to me, and to this day, I occasionally call Trish Stratus my fifth child, ever since the kindness she showed my sponsored child in the Philippines such kindness, that the child would begin all her letters by writing “How is Dewey? How is Noelle? How is Mickey? How is Hughie? How is Trish?” But until recently, I don’t think I ever had a wrestling colleague who felt like a sister…and now I do.

I always liked Saraya, but because she was moved up to the main roster at the same time my younger boys became passionate about NXT, I did not get to see her when she was changing the face of women’s wrestling on NXT. I do vividly recall hearing my boys actively cheering one afternoon, and walked downstairs to see a women’s wrestling match unlike anything I’d seen in WWE rings in a long time. One of the women, Paige (Saraya’s ring name in WWE) also did not look like any of the WWE women I’d seen in a long time. With all due respect to every woman who has ever worked hard to be their very best inside the ring, Paige did not look like a fitness contestant, a model, or a star athlete making a transition to the ring. She looked like a wrestler, and before I found out she had grown up with wrestling in her veins, I could almost sense it. But moving up to the main roster meant she would not be afforded those same chances to shine as brightly as she had at NXT, because the WWE Divas division did not often give the talented women more than a few minutes to tell their stories inside the ring. So while I liked Paige very much as a performer, and later as a person, following her call-up to the main roster, I became a vocal proponent for the NXT women, and the “4 Horsewomen” in particular. Indeed, my actual knowledge of Paige’s NXT run was so limited that she playfully ran across a television studio and punched me when I did not list her as one of the greatest NXT women’s champions. “I wasn’t watching when you were there” I said, both of us laughing, but deep down, I’m guessing it probably hurt Saraya a little bit. There I was – as something of a wrestling expert – acting more like an academy award member choosing a favorite film without actually watching all of them first.

I should have been more aware of the impact Saraya was making, not only in WWE women’s wrestling, but professional wrestling in general. Early in her WWE main roster run, I saw a cool photo of Paige holding a barbed wire bat and put out a Facebook post that simply said, “I’m Mick Foley and I approve this message” – and the post did huge numbers. Upon seeing those huge numbers, I remember thinking “wow, people really love Paige”, but until the past several months, I did not realize just how deep a bond she had formed with her fans.

While Saraya and I have been friends for over 10 years, it’s only recently that we really started getting to know each other. Prior to working with her at these conventions, Saraya and I shared that casual wrestler/4th cousin twice removed type of relationship: a nice bro-hug, a couple minutes of pleasant conversation, and the occasional text message. Actually, until recently, I think it would be safe to say that Saraya had actually been closer with my daughter Noelle than she had been with me, and I was probably just as close to Saraya‘s parents as I was with her. But at a time when it’s only natural to drift away from longtime friends, Saraya and I have actually been hitting it off famously – hanging out, having dinner, even doing karaoke together! That hug you see, with the genuine happiness on our faces? It’s real. As my friend Kurt Angle (who, rumor has it won an Olympic gold medal with a broken freaking neck) might say: “it’s real, darn real.” At a time when some of my long-term friendships are waning, I actually have someone in this crazy business who feels like a sister to me.

There are times at these conventions where there’s a lull in my crowd, and I will look over at the fans in Saraya’s line, and sense something far more important than wrestler/fan interactions taking place. I see fans in tears and I see the way Saraya treats them – with genuine kindness and respect – and realize I am witnessing one of the most important moments in some people’s lives. Seeing Saraya with her fans makes me want to be better with my own fans. A truly great wrestler can make another wrestler so much better in the ring. But it takes a truly special person to make someone want to be a better man. I love you, sis!