Wrestler, currently with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Known for his hardcore style and seeming inability to feel pain. He has been blown up, thrown into barbed wire, choke-slammed onto a floor covered with thumbtacks, and has lost several teeth and part of one ear. Performs these insane stunts under the names Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind. Mick Foley is God.

Former professional wrestler with WCW, ECW, and one of the Japnese feds, as well as most recently the WWF. His claim to fame was a willingness to sacrifice his own body for the fans: fighting through barbed wire, exploding ring matches to become king of the death matches, in Japan, for instance, or taking a dive off of the top of the cage, into a table shot in a Hell in a Cell match at King of the Ring in Pittsburgh. He's fluent in Japanese, English, and Spanish and has written a best selling biography, as well as being important to Ron Howard's documentary, Beyond the Mat. Long a monster heel under the the persona of Cactus Jack, after he started his final stint with the WWF, he took up the persona Mankind, and briefly, Dude Love. Long a wrestler with a large cult following, in the WWF he developed into a main event quality face. He has entered a state of retirement after loosing to Triple H in a Retirement match, after a long, brutal sixteen year career.

Titles:
Former 3 time WWF Champion.
Former WWF Hardcore Champion.
Former 8 time WWF Tag Team Champion.
Former WCW Tag Team Champion.
Former 2 time ECW Tag Team Champion.
Winner of the "King of The Deathmatches" tournament.
Okay, here goes:

Mick Foley was born and raised in East Setauket, Long Island (New York, and about 15 minutes from my house), attending Ward Melville High School. He then attended Cortland College, at which time he began driving hours upon hours to attend Dominic DeNucci's wrestling school. He was so strapped for cash that he only had enough money to stay in a motel one out of the two nights he was out of town at the wrestling school--on the other day he slept in his car.

He had his first few matches in 1983, wrestling at small independent events until his graduation. He was also used as a jobber (cannon fodder) at a few local WWF shows in 1986, and some footage exists of him getting his ass royally whooped by such greats as the British Bulldogs and Kamala.

After graduation, he began to wrestle for some independent circuits under the name of Cactus Jack until being picked up by World Championship Wrestling in 1991. He wrestled there with moderate success, winning the WCW Tag Team Titles with Kevin Sullivan on several occasions.

In 1994 he suffered his most famous injury, the loss of half an ear during a house show in Germany against Vader. He attempted a "hangman", a move during which his head was supposed to get caught between the top and middle ropes for a few moments before he freed himself. The ring ropes had been tightened prior in the evening without his knowledge, and were so tight it caused excrutiating pain and half an ear to be ripped off his head upon being freed. He has been quoted as saying that the ear might have been saved, if only he had known the German word for formaldahyde.

Disagreements with Ric Flair and Eric Bischoff caused him to leave WCW in 1995, and he then wrestled for several months in Extreme Championship Wrestling. He began preaching against the hardcore nature of ECW and praising the WWF and WCW (all in character), causing the fans to absolutely hate him and making him a very effective heel (bad guy).

He was soon picked up by the World Wrestling Federation, where for the first time he dropped the Cactus Jack persona and was given the gimmick of Mankind. Mankind, so the storyline went, was an award-winning pianist who rebelled against his mother's torturous rule by smashing his own fingers and leaving home to live in the sewers, where he was raised by rats. Thankfully, the whole backstory was dropped soon after and he was just some psycho wrestler dude named Mankind. He feuded mostly with The Undertaker for his first few years in the WWF.

In the summer of 1997, Mankind began to morph into Dude Love, a hep cat who got all the babes. Foley had created Dude Love during high school while filming a home movie, and the Dude was brought in after Stone Cold Steve Austin kept refusing to allow Mankind to be his tag team partner. So, Mankind allowed Dude Love to be his partner instead, and they won the tag team titles that night against Owen Hart and the British Bulldog.

Cactus Jack also debuted in 1997, to help end a feud with Hunter Hearst Helmsley. The so-called "Three Faces of Foley"--Mankind, Dude Love, and Cactus Jack--had now all wrestled in the WWF.

Foley gained many people's attention at King of the Ring '98, where he wrestled The Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match--wherein the entire ring and the area around it is covered with a gigantic roofed steel cage. He took two gigantic bumps (falls) during the match--the first, when he was thrown off the top of the cage and broke through the announcer's table some sixteen feet below. Second, when The Undertaker chokeslammed him on the top of the cage, causing the cage to break and Foley to plummet through the roof, all the way down to the ring below. Also of note is that after all of this, he continued the match as planned for another twenty or so minutes, including taking several bumps into thousands of thumbtacks he had liberally placed in the ring.

The first bump was planned. The second was NOT--the cage was not supposed to break. Foley has admitted he doesn't remember a damn thing about the match after the second fall, although he has since pieced it together with the help of the video footage. It is said that he asked the Undertaker after the match if he had ever gotten around to using the thumbtacks--as hundreds of them were covering his body.

He was moved to the main event soon afterwards, going into a terrific feud with The Rock in late 1998 as the biggest babyface in the federation (while Stone Cold Steve Austin was briefly injured, anyway). He won the first of three WWF Championships he would eventually win on 12/29/98, defeating The Rock.

He remained a main event wrestler for the next year and a half, until all his nagging injuries forced him to retire. His last couple of matches are already becoming legendary, first losing to HHH in a Street Fight at the 2000 Royal Rumble, and then again losing to HHH in a Hell in a Cell match at No Way Out '00--a match in which he was obligated to retire if he lost. Both of those matches are considered to be some of the best of the last ten years.

He was brought back by Linda McMahon to wrestle one last match the next month at Wrestlemania 2000, thus fulfilling his only un-fulfilled dream: to wrestle in the main event of a Wrestlemania.

He has not wrestled since, although he was brought back as the WWF Commissioner for several months in 2000.

A list of Mick Foley's confirmed injuries (courtesy www.wwf.com):
**Six concussions from 1986 to 1998
***One broken jaw in 1986
***Two broken noses in 1993
***One broken cheekbone in 1998
***Lost four front teeth from 1989 to 1998
***Two-thirds of his ear ripped off in 1993 (Against Vader in Germany)
***A separated shoulder in 1990
***A fractured left shoulder in 1989
***A dislocated shoulder in 1998
***Second degree burn on his shoulder in 1995 (In the King of the Death Match in Japan)
***Second degree burns on his arm in 1995 (In the King of the Death Match in Japan)
***54 stitches on his left arm in 1995 (In the King of the Death Match in Japan)
***A broken right wrist in 1989
***Bone chips in his right elbow in 1996
***Six broken ribs from 1991 to 1998
***A torn abdominal in 1992
***A torn ACL
***A broken toe in 1991
***A total of over 300 stitches in his arms, head, eyebrows, hands, ears, shin, cheek and lip
***Thousands of thumbtack holes

Professional wrestler and best-selling author, he wrote these two New York Times Best Selling autobiographies:

He may have been the first professional wrestler to write his own autobiography, and definitely the most successful. He also wrote a children's book - Mick Foley's Christmas Chaos, which is, interestingly, illustrated by another wrestling renaissance man Jerry Lawler.

He will also soon release Mick Foley's Halloween Havoc, again including Jerry Lawler illustrations.

Before one makes any judgement of professional wrestling, one should read his first autobiography.

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