An American retired professional wrestler, Michael Francis Foley was born on 7 June 1965. He is currently a company ambassador under WWE’s Legends programme. Throughout his career, Foley worked for numerous wrestling promotions for example the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), and National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), as well as multiple promotions in Japan.
Foley is highly regarded as one of the biggest stars of the Attitude Era and is considered to be one of the greatest wrestlers in the history of WWE. He even took part in the main event of WrestleMania in 1999 and 2000, with a special guest referee role in the former. In 2013, Foley was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Inspiration For Stardom
After watching Jimmy Snuka jump from the top of a steel cage in Madison Square Gardens, Mick Foley was inspired to become a superstar himself. He adopted Snuka’s fearlessness and entered the ring as Cactus Jack, earning a fan following not for winning matches, but for surviving them.
Mick Foley’s early years in wrestling were inconsistent until he found his stride in the latter half of the 1980s, adopting the character of Cactus Jack. While the initial iteration of the character wasn’t fully fleshed out, it drew inspiration from notorious cult leader Charles Manson and displayed sadistic tendencies that helped fuel promotions like World Championship Wrestling and Eastern Championship Wrestling in the 1990s. Cactus Jack became known for his signature catchphrase “Bang bang!” and his use of barbed-wire bats, which resulted in bloody and brutal appearances. So, if gore isn’t your thing, rather stick to looking for the best tennis betting odds than watching his old matches.
Mankind
Mick Foley’s big break with other legends of WWE came with the condition that he would take on the role of a new masked character. He eventually accepted the challenge and became Mankind, a deeply disturbed figure who resided in a boiler room, confided in his pet rat, George, and delivered the signature move known as the “Mandible Claw”.
In 1996, when Foley joined WWE, he became Mankind, an unbalanced miscreant who lurked in boiler rooms and pushed his fingers down opponents’ throats. Under the leather mask of this maniac, Foley experienced sports-entertainment’s most shocking moment when he was thrown off the top of the Hell in a Cell by The Undertaker. This unforgettable image of Foley’s body plummeting to the ground below defined not only his career, but also WWE’s “Attitude Era” as a whole.
Dude Love
Mick Foley’s creation of the character, Dude Love, is his least-used major persona, but it happened to be his first. The character was inspired by his early days in backyard wrestling videos when he was still underage. The WWE version of Dude Love emerged a dozen years later after a series of promotional interviews in which an anguished Mankind revealed his dashed childhood dreams. Dude Love’s cheerful and carefree personality served as a fun contrast to the serious and intense Stone Cold Steve Austin in several memorable matches. Although the character’s run was brief, it aided Foley’s rise to the top of the WWE hierarchy.