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