If Mick Foley was a cartoon crime-fighting superhero, he’d be the Toxic Crusader: About as physically attractive as batshit and equally talented, but what he lacks in ability he makes up for with an interesting look and bucketloads of charisma. Mick Foley was the Toxic Crusader of professional wrestling – It’s just a pity he can’t use radiation poisoning as an excuse.
Mick Foley, born Michael Foley (go figure), brought to pro wrestling what so many others couldn’t – abnormality through normality. In an era where performers had the bodies of Greek gods and the creativity of the Christian theologians who stole them for their own book, Mick Foley stood out like a man with only one ear – and it’s no coincidence that that was exactly what he was.
Wrestling as Cactus Jack, Foley worked predominantly in the Southern regions of the United States, as well as in Japan, playing a deranged lunatic who would put his body through pain and torment if it meant inflicting equally as much on his opponents. During a series of matches with former world champion Vader, Mick lost two thirds of his ear after tangling himself in the ring ropes. Mick’s matches with Vader were so brutal that they were banned from competing against one another on pay per view for the then World Championship Wrestling, one of which saw Foley lose sensation in his right leg after being powerbombed onto the unpadded concrete at ringside.
After leaving WCW, Foley (still wrestling as Cactus Jack) found comfort with a promotion almost deranged as he – Extreme Championship Wrestling, better known as ECW. One rivalry of note saw Cactus battle with the Sandman, where in one match Mick was belted with a Singapore cane over forty times. During his time in ECW, Mick complemented his risky stunts in the ring with terrific monologue interviews, and it was this expose of charisma which garnered the attention of the big dogs in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
The abnormal wrestler debuted in the WWF in 1996, only this time it wasn’t as Cactus Jack, but the deranged, mentally unstable Mankind. Wearing a leather “Hannibal Lector” style mask, Mankind squealed throughout matches, conducted interviews from the boiler rooms of arenas and frequently physically abused himself on camera. Little did he know that over 15 years later it would be the fans performing selfharm, as Mick waddled down to the ring in the fledgling TNA Wrestling. Mankind feuded with the Undertaker, bringing a new degree of violence and abnormality to the then kid-friendly product seen in the WWF. Buried alive matches and brawls in boiler rooms were not uncommon, and before long Mick found himself challenging for the WWF Championship, losing to Shawn Michaels by disqualification.
Mick Foley debuted yet another persona mid-1997, reviving a character concocted in home videos by the name of Dude Love. A 50s hippy who entered the ring to 70s music, Dude Love would capture the tag team championships with the beer guzzling, ass kicking, future wife beating machine Stone Cold Steve Austin, and conducted a series of humour interview segments where Dude Love and Mankind would chat to one-another, sort of like Fight Club, but without the faggy dialogue. Eventually both Dude and Mank (?) decided that it was time for the WWF audience to meet another of Mick’s friends, none other than the one-eared maniac himself, Cactus Jack and for the next 12 months or so, all three wrestled on-and-off on our TV screens.
Mankind took a huge leap – literally, at the WWF’s King of the Ring pay per view event in mid-1998. In a Hell in The Cell match with the Undertaker, Mick was thrown from a fifteen foot steel cage to ringside, where a wooden announcers’ table and the cushy concrete beneath broke his fall. Moments later, Foley was chokeslammed through the roof of the cage and remained unconscious for several minutes. The two death defying acts proved what this idiot would do for the pleasure of fans, not all that dissimilar to what the gladiators of yesteryear would put themselves through, only the prize was not survival, but a golden ticket to the merchandising gravy train. The price for both however, would be more or less the same, as many have since discovered (ala Chris Benoit, thanks Sean P). Speaking of merchandising, it was around this time I purchased my first Mankind action figure, which ironically had its head decapitated just moments after being removed from its packaging. Who would have thought a piledriver from a chest of drawers would have such disastrous consequences.
In what was Foley’s (the real one, not the 6 inch doll with his head and neck fused with superglue) greatest achievement came in 1999, when the original Jackass defeated the Rock (that guy from Doom) on the nationally sindicated Monday Night Raw for the coveted WWF Championship. Though Mick’s title reign lasted under three weeks, it was a monumental step for the struggling WWF, who broke an 80-something week losing streak to rival WCW in a ratings race, known as the Monday Night War. Foley would later lose the belt back to the Rock in another hardcore bruisefest, an “I Quit” match, where the loser would be the first man to say “I Quit”.
Around this time, freakboy began utilising a sock in the mouth as his finishing manoeuvre. Now I’m all for a good pun and double entendre, but Mick’s well documented dryness reached Sahara Desert levels when he began pulling out “Mr. Socko” from his sweat pants and shoving it down rivals throats. It may sound disgusting, and truth is it was, but for a brief period of time the WWF was like Beavis & Butthead, South Park, Spawn and Singled Out all rolled into one. It was exactly how it sounded, brilliant.
Though his career began to wane after the turn of the century, Mick still managed to continue the barbarity in the ring, facing off in horrific matches with Triple H, and later on, Edge. He also formed an unlikely friendship with the Rock, and in one of the more humorous vignettes of the time, interviewed the Rock in a “This Is Your Life” sketch. After writing a few best sellers, wrestling a few hardcore matches here and there, and providing colour commentary for a number of the WWE (they were forced to change their name when the World Wildlife Fund sewed. Yep, the Undertaker, Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin got punked out by a bunch of fucking pandas of all things) the now over-the-hill Foley opted to head for greener pastures for the recently formed company, TNA Wrestling.
Now I don’t want to run Foley’s name into the mud, even if I was being a tad sarcastic above, I was and still am to this day, a fan of Mick’s work in wrestling. He bought something different to the table, which is always good when it comes to entertainment. However, from the mid 2000s onward, Mick’s act had gotten old...fucking old, and unfortunately like plenty of other professional wrestlers before him, and like plenty will do so after him, he overstayed his welcome. After seeing a couple of his antics in TNA Wrestling...by God...I’ll let you be the judge. In recent times wrestling has plunged in terms of creativity and pioneering entertainment, but Mick Foley, and TNA in general epitomise everything that is wrong with the wrasslin’ business: over the hill, over the top and all over the fucking place.
But I will save that for another rant.
Cactus Jack, Dude Love, Mankind, Toxic Crusader, Freakboy, whatever you may know him as, Mick Foley brought a new stream of creativity to professional wrestling. Love it or hate it, when Mick was at his best, wrestling was damn entertaining, and if we had a couple of Micks in the modern industry, you can bet your ass kids wouldn’t be singing faggy Kanye West songs and getting haircuts that make their heads look like the backend of a skunk’s ass, that’s for sure. Mick Foley wasn’t just a wrestler, he was a creative genius. Was being the operative, because judging from what I’ve seen of him recently, there’s nothing remotely intelligent about TNA Wrestling.
Mick Foley. Wrestler. Author. Toxic Crusader.
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