by Mick Foley
I returned to the ring wars with gusto and was even chosen to be Undertaker’s first opponent after winning the World Wrestling Federation title at WrestleMania. “Are you sure that people will want to see this match?” I’d asked Vince. Apparently Vince had more faith in me that I did, and the match was signed, and went on to be not only damn good, but profitable as well. This was our fifth go-round on Pay-Per-View, and we’d come up big on four of them. I had no way of knowing that we’d come up biggest of all fourteen months later.
The month of May was significant for two odd things that happened. The first took place in Toronto, after the matches, when I BS’d with Bruce Pritchard and Jim Ross while I waited for Stone Cold, who was talking contract with Vinnie Mac. By this point, Austin had exploded, and I could no longer reasonably compare my contract desires to his. But I hoped he’d get what he had coming to him anyway. It is a great credit to him that despite his huge success, he has stayed levelheaded and has never stopped being “one of the boys.”
Austin had been in conversation behind closed doors with Vince for a while, and the three of us were chatting amicably when Bruce asked me something a little strange. “Do you have any of that footage I heard about when you were Dude Love?”
I had to laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure I have it somewhere, but why?”
Bruce smiled. Maybe as the former Brother Love, he had a deep affection for another Love namesake. “We want to put it on TV,” he said.
“Come on,” I yelled, disbelieving. “You can’t put it on TV, it’s terrible.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce assured me, “we’ll just put on small clips.” He’d sold me. “Okay, okay,” I relented, “but how are you going to use it?”
Bruce looked at J. R. “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “J. R. has an idea.” The second thing of significance was the first ever matchup between The Rock and Mankind on the May Pay-Per-View from Richmond, Virginia. Unfortunately, at that time, The Rock was Rocky Maivia, and he may have been the most hated wrestler in the company. Which is fine, if that’s your job description, but Rocky was supposed to be a good guy. He had all the attributes of a good guy, but unfortunately he had come twenty years too late, and although he was a good young talent, no one was buying what Rocky had to sell.
I was starting to get a lot of cheers, and since The Rock was getting booed out of every building he appeared in, I was the babyface by process of elimination. Poor Rock. We had a good match, but the fans just hated the guy, and when Rock hit me with a high cross bodyblock off the top, I rolled through with the mandible claw for the victory, and the roar of the crowd was deafening. The next day, one of the guys asked for my impression of Rocky. “Hey, he’s a nice guy,” I said, “but he just doesn’t have it. The office should probably just cut their losses and get rid of the guy.” I had no idea that I was talking about the future “People’s and Corporate Champion.”
Chapter 35
At the end of May, J.R. talked with me about an idea they were planning. Goldust had just been the subject of a two-part “up close and personal” interview that had been very insightful and beneficial to his career. J. R. felt that a similar interview could yield similar results for me. Vince had heard fragments of my real history and thought that it was actually more captivating than any fictional background. We set a date to do the interview and a second day to try to finalize a contract. I had Colette flown in for the contract talks because she wanted to be there, and also because she tended to get a better price for my services than I did.
I had been thinking about my interview with J. R. for several days when I arrived at the television studio for the talk that would change my career. I was told that Vince might be stopping by to check out the interview, which was fine with me. Kevin Dunne, who is a director for the Federation, came up while I was getting dressed, and explained their concept, which involved appearing without the mask as Mick Foley. I actually liked the mask by this point, and would wear it for several hours prior to a match. Now the damn thing smells so bad that I practically put it on while my music is playing. I believed in Mankind and didn’t want anyone to see the real Mick Foley just yet. So I came up with a game plan. I would tell the real-life Mick Foley stories, and I would give Mick Foley’s opinions, but I would do it as Mankind. In actuality, the two weren’t that different, as in most cases the most successful gimmicks were simply an amplified extension of a certain part of the real-life personality. I guess in that case, Mankind was the insecure side of my personality; the side that had never quite felt accepted. It was that side that surfaced in the Jim Ross interview, and it surfaced in a way that was both funny and touching, and it changed the way people perceived and felt about Mankind.
People often talk about wrestling being “scripted.” Actually nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, guys have a general idea of what they are trying to accomplish, and yes, sometimes guys are given specific lines to say that will be beneficial in drawing money, but the truth is, in my three and a half years with the Federation, I have only done two scripted interviews. J. R. and I talked briefly on the phone the night before taping and went over a few ideas, but the entire interview, with the exception of the mandible claw that I caught J. R. with at the end, was completely ad-libbed.
After fifteen minutes of talking, I said something I thought was inappropriate and asked if we could do the question over. It was then that I saw Vince, who had been watching from the wings. “This is absolutely captivating,” he said. I had once been told that for Vince to get completely behind someone, he needed to become a fan of his. I believe that night in the studio was when Vince McMahon actually became a fan of mine. I was so completely inside the character that I knew when we were done that something special had just taken place. I consider that interview to be on the list of the three best things I’d ever done.
Mick: I was eight years old at Minnesocki Elementary School playing a game of “kill the guy with the ball” (it may even be an Olympic sport these days) and in chasing one of the other students, I made a leap for his legs, and the back of his foot kicked me in the lip. And I didn’t know what happened; I knew it hurt, Jimmy, I knew it hurt bad, but all of a sudden people started looking at me in a different way like there was something wrong with me. I looked down at my Chicago Bears sweatshirt, back in the days when they were two and twelve, in the waning days of Dick Butkus, and my Chicago Bears white sweatshirt had suddenly turned red and children were running from me, scared, ah, I was bleeding, I was in pain, and I was loving it! Because I felt like I’d finally found something in my life that I could do better than everybody else. Handle pain. Someone said, “Oh, that’s just vampire blood,” and then saw the open wound from which the blood was flowing. I’ve still got that shirt, Jimmy, and I remember thinking wouldn’t it be nice if I could do something in my life where I could do this all the time? Get that attention every night. Stockbrokers can’t do it. Teachers can’t do it. The President of the United States can’t bleed for a living! But pro wrestlers can. It’s the first time that I realized that I had a calling in my life, and I followed it right down the line. That’s all I wanted to do. My brother and I watched them all-Chief Jay Strongbow, Bruno Sammartino, the Valiant Brothers, that’s what we wanted to be. Then I broke his nose by backdropping him into his bedroom wall and Mom said no more wrestling, but she didn’t say no more dreaming.
J.R.: Well, Mick Foley continued to pursue his dream, but he paid a heavy price, the emotional scars of his strange childhood are still evident.
Mick: You know, I want to tell my son, when he gets to be fifteen, not to be the guy that eats strange things. I never exactly brought it upon myself; other people in their cliques, for lack of a better word, they would gang up on me because I was different, because I acted different, looked different. They were throwing worms at me, Jimmy, little wiggly worms; they were throwing them at me. Bending down in athletic class, doing my hurdler’s stretch, and there was a bombardment of worms being thrown at me. So what do you do
to retaliate? You throw the worm back? At seven or eight people? It’s not the fact they were hurting me, they were wounding my pride. They were looking at me like I was garbage. So I picked up the largest specimen, Jimmy, and I sucked it down! To show them that their attempts to hurt my pride would not be successful. I thought, Jimmy, that I’d shown them, but then sure enough the story became exaggerated as everything in life does and it no longer became “Well Mickey Foley ate one worm because some kids were picking on him” it became “Mickey Foley eats a plate full of worms every day.” Do you think I got many dates after that, Jimmy?
J.R.: Probably not.
Mick: Do you think girls wanted to kiss a boy who had worms on his breath? I’m a good kisser! But I never got the chance to show it! What am I gonna do, practice on myself, Jimmy? I never had the chance to show the world that I could love and could be loved, because they ruled me out because I had a strange appetite for strange things. I’m not going to say I didn’t accept money to eat other strange things, but the fact is that damage had been done and I went through my entire high school days without date number one. You don’t think that scarred my soul? Well maybe you’re not looking deep enough.
J.R. voice-over: Mickey Foley was searching for a place to belong.
Mick: It was 1983. And upstate New York with its endless rolling fields might be a nice place for a lot of boys, but not when Jimmy Snuka and Don Muraco were in a cage in October in Madison Square Garden-that’s where I wanted to be! I didn’t want to ride horses along a field, I didn’t want to fish for trout in a stream, I wanted to be where the blood and guts were, Jimmy. So I put out my thumb, Jimmy, and it took sixteen or seventeen hours, but I made my way to the Garden. It took just about all the money I had in the world, but I got a front row seat, and I saw the move that would change my life, when Jimmy Snuka came off the top of the cage. And I saw people stand up, and I saw people cheer, and I know I wasn’t the only person whose life was changed in that arena. And I realized, Jimmy, that I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to hear people cheer for me because of some act of bravery that I committed. I wanted to hear, see people’s emotions; I wanted to see children cry out of love for me and the things I could do inside a ring. I made a movie when I was eighteen about myself, maybe as a type of escape where I was a wrestler and it’s strange, the first time I ever met Shawn Michaels-you know him.
J.R.: Oh yeah, very well.
Mick: He looked at my scarred and battered body. He didn’t know me, but he knew the legend of who I was before, and he said, “Is this the way you always envisioned yourself?” Looking somewhat down on me. And I said, “No, you know the strange thing is I always imagined myself being you.” And he said, “You mean the champ?” And I said, “No, I mean the girls.” Jewelry, the tattoos, the love. So in my movie I was not Mick Foley. I sure as hell wasn’t Mankind. I was Dude Love.
Dude Love tape, November 1983: We are gonna tear this rotten apple right down to its stinking New York core, and while we’re here, we’re here for only one reason, one reason only: fame, honor, fortune, glory, to destruct, destroy, and to take that that World Wrestling Federation Championship Belt …
Mick: And during the course of the movie, dating back to my experience at Madison Square Garden, I decided I was going to do something heroic, I was going to do something to make people cheer for me, so I ascended up onto my friend’s roof, and I dove off.
J.R. voice-over: Ironically, The Loved One gave Mick Foley his first break; it became an underground hit and somehow wound up in the hands of wrestling great Dominic DeNucci. DeNucci admired Mick’s guts more than his skill and took him under his wing. Every weekend for the next two years Mick traveled 800 miles round-trip eating and sleeping in the backseat of his ‘79 Ford Fairmont still hoping to realize his dream.
Mick: I knew I wasn’t ready to be Dude Love yet, I never wanted to be Cactus Jack. I figured here is a horrible name for a horrible wrestler, and by golly as soon as I get the ability that I’ll get that heart-shaped tattoo on my chest, I’ll put those earrings in, and I’m gonna get the girls. And it never really worked out that way, did it, Jimmy?
J.R.: Not quite.
Mick: I guess nature didn’t cooperate with me. Cactus Jack was supposed to be around for three months. He stayed for eleven years. What made Cactus Jack different was that he just wanted it a little bit more. He was willing to go the extra length. He was willing to sleep in a filthy car in order to achieve his dreams. He was willing to forgo romantic relationships to be the best. He was somebody in an era of bodybuilder physiques who carved out his own niche, who said I’m gonna make it on my own style, who said, “No one else is gonna tell me what to do, I’m not going to dye my hair. I’m going to be exactly who I am, and I’m going to do it my way.”
J. R.: Don’t you think that it’s about time in your life where you looked squarely in the mirror and accepted the personal responsibility for who you are? Don’t you believe that you yourself have caused and brought on all these problems?
Mick: I think it’s time for you to maybe start doing your damn job. I think it’s time for you to end this facade of journalistic integrity. You know what you tell the people week in and week out? You say “Look at Mankind, I don’t even know if he feels pain, or maybe he likes pain.” You see you’re a powerful man, Jimmy, you have got the ability to reach a lot of people, to spread the truth, and you neglect to do it. Let me ask you a couple of questions. What is it about pain that I love? You see, I feel just like every other person, you see that? [ripping his hair out violently] It hurts! Is it when I can’t get up when my little boy says, “Daddy, I want to play ball” and I can’t do it? Is that where the fun starts? Is it where a doctor injects a 12-inch needle into the discs in my spine so I can wrestle one more day? Whoopee! Let the party begin! I can’t believe you sit here and ask me those questions. Do I bring it on to myself? I haven’t done a damn thing to you. All you’ve done to people is mislead them and let them think I’m having the time of my goddamned life when I’m in pain! Don’t you look at me with that smug look. You make me sick. A man of integrity; I ought to smack you …
(Mankind attacks with the mandible claw)
Off-screen voice: Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Can we get some help … ? He’s gonna need some help ….
The response to the interview was overwhelming. It was shown in four segments, and each week I could feel the momentum growing. The interviews were never intended to make me a “good guy,” but the pieces came off so well that I started being cheered. Every week, the reaction grew, to the point where I soon was one of the most loved wrestlers in the company.
I should point out now that it wasn’t simply the interview that made the piece so successful-it was the presentation as well. Chris Chambers produced the specials and did a phenomenal job of weaving childhood photos, the infamous Dude Love video, and even Japanese death match footage into the story. Dave Sahadi and Doug Lebow are two other extremely talented producers that the World Wrestling Federation is lucky to have. As a former television production student, I am well aware of their importance to what we do, as without them we might very well look like fat guys in their underwear, pretending to fight.
Perhaps the biggest star of the entire interview series was my fantasy creation of Dude Love. I began receiving letters from fans about my Dude dream that had inspired them to follow theirs, and there was even a small contingent of Dude Love signs in the arenas. I was surprised one evening to hear Bruce Pritchard say, “You know, we’re going to make a Dude Love shirt,” and I was literally shocked when Vince later proposed a radical idea. “Mick, for one night only, somewhere in the future, we’re going to have a Dude Love match on Pay-Per-View.” I could not believe it. Dude Love in the World Wrestling Federation-oh, have mercy!
My contract negotiation had also gone well. It didn’t make me rich, but it certainly provided security for my family, and if invested wisely, the money could make me wealthy over time. I was able to have several advantageous cond
itions worked in, and my final deal was considerably more lucrative than the one offered a year earlier. With the contract talks behind me, I was now able to lie down at night secure in the knowledge that I was making only slightly less than a second-string shortstop hitting .187 for the Mariners. True to his word, however, Vince started putting the company’s promotional power behind Mankind, and he seemed to explode in the summer of 1997-the Summer of Love.
Coming off a tremendous final match at the King of the Ring, my feud with Hunter Hearst Helmsley was met with great enthusiasm around the country. Helmsley, better known now as Triple H, was a talented wrestler whose star was just starting to rise, and our battles throughout the summer were highlights of my career. I remember one specific match in Nassau Coliseum where I had both Hunter and Chyna (his bodyguard) caught in the dreaded double mandible. The crowd was going crazy, and I couldn’t control my emotions. “This is great!” I yelled, with an enthusiasm more befitting a thirteen-year-old touching his first female breast. To further the emotional high, I saw Colette and the kids sitting in the stands as I started to exit through the curtain. I went back, picked up Noelle, and spun her in the air as the usually tough Nassau crowd softened up. I put her down and reached for Dewey, who screamed and ran as if I were a Disney character.
