- 5 months ago
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00:00:00My story is a happy story.
00:00:08A standing ovation for Mick Foley,
00:00:11the former WWE Champion and the best-selling author,
00:00:15the now stand-up comic.
00:00:17Sure, I visited a few emergency rooms in my day.
00:00:22As God is my witness, he is broken in half.
00:00:25And sure, maybe I'm a veteran of a few too many Norman Bates showers.
00:00:33Foley tasting his own blood now, thriving on it.
00:00:38But the rest of it is happy.
00:00:42It's Mr. Sacko time!
00:00:45The part about chasing my dreams.
00:00:48Mankind is a genius dream,
00:00:50and the dream of everyone else who's been told,
00:00:53you can't do it!
00:00:55Overcoming odds.
00:00:57Mick Foley has more heart than perhaps any superstar we've ever seen.
00:01:03And retiring on top of the business.
00:01:06The hardcore legend may be the toughest man to ever lace his boots.
00:01:13I was born in Bloomington, Indiana, so I'm a native Hoosier.
00:01:27I moved to New York when I was just several months old,
00:01:43and I live now about ten minutes from the house where I grew up.
00:01:48When I look back on it, it was really almost idyllic.
00:01:54You know, we had five or six neighbors all in the same street.
00:01:58We actually had our own street wiffle ball team.
00:02:01The Parsons Yankees.
00:02:03Mick and I go back actually to about 12 years old.
00:02:07I first met Mick in my Little League days.
00:02:10He and I were both pitchers.
00:02:12Mick was one great pitcher.
00:02:14He was feared in the league.
00:02:17Great friends through junior high school and into high school.
00:02:20My father was the athletic director at our high school,
00:02:23so I grew up attending every event imaginable.
00:02:28Sports was a big influence on me.
00:02:31I was an athlete in high school.
00:02:34My dad insisted that I play three sports as a sophomore.
00:02:38Oddly, I only excelled at sports that were, they may have been team sports,
00:02:45but there had to be an individual function to it.
00:02:48I was a good goalie in lacrosse.
00:02:50Played a lot of lacrosse together.
00:02:51Even back then, he did, you know, a lot of, you know, strange things to capture everybody's attention,
00:02:59including but not limited to eating worms right off the field.
00:03:05You know, dangling them in front of the opposing attackman
00:03:09and making sure that they saw him eating worms right off the playing field,
00:03:15which, you know, really repulsed a lot of people.
00:03:19Got a lot of people's attention.
00:03:21What I found that the sport I enjoyed the most was amateur wrestling.
00:03:27I was attempting to run winter track as a way to get in shape for lacrosse.
00:03:33A friend of mine was the captain of the wrestling team.
00:03:37And he said, winter track, huh?
00:03:40He said, yeah, yeah.
00:03:41He said, you're probably the slowest guy in the school.
00:03:43And this is even before knee surgeries and a little bit of weight gain.
00:03:47And he said, you know, wrestling will get you in better shape than track.
00:03:51Going out for that team was probably the smartest, most courageous move I've ever made.
00:03:57And the courage comes into play when you realize that the team already had a heavyweight.
00:04:02And he was the toughest kid in the school.
00:04:05And his name was Kevin James, the king of Queens, was the heavyweight wrestler.
00:04:10And Kevin and I ended up, you know, we were friends and we were competitors.
00:04:16And he ended up having a back injury.
00:04:19I kind of filled in.
00:04:21And had it not been for that experience as a high school wrestler, just that one year,
00:04:28where I was beating people who were ranked in the county, you know, and I wasn't doing it.
00:04:33I don't know how I did it.
00:04:34It wasn't strength.
00:04:36I wasn't great.
00:04:38And I certainly wasn't overpowering.
00:04:40And I was able to beat some pretty impressive people.
00:04:47I was a pretty gifted student who later on went on to be a great underachiever in middle school and high school.
00:04:56But my writing was really good.
00:04:59All during school years, high school years, he wrote a lot of songs.
00:05:03You know, he wrote a song that we performed actually as an air guitar band in a high school talent show.
00:05:10He would tell me, I remember him saying that I, you know, he woke up in the middle of the night thinking of things and he would write it down.
00:05:15He was definitely creative, more creative than most.
00:05:18For as long as I can remember when we were young, he was always so shy.
00:05:22We'd always hear the stories of these funny pranks he would do.
00:05:25And we would always be like, eh?
00:05:27Like we, you just wouldn't expect it because he was so quiet.
00:05:31But with his guys, he could plot his pranks.
00:05:34As we got up in the years 11th and 12th grade, he was pretty, he was pretty shy.
00:05:39But once he started doing some crazy stuff, our senior year, I think, he shaved half a beard and half a mustard.
00:05:47Walked around like that with, for about two, three weeks.
00:05:51Senior year, he, uh, he dressed up as the homecoming queen in the high school parade, going right down Main Street and, and, uh, hometown Sautauket.
00:06:02Always the entertainer.
00:06:04He definitely stood out as being different.
00:06:07You know, we, I always thought he was going to do something that kind of made him famous, you know?
00:06:11And, uh, you know, he was definitely always going to be well known.
00:06:15My brother and I both went through periods where we were huge wrestling fans, where we would watch it at midnight after horse racing.
00:06:25And then we, there was also one at 11 or 12 o'clock in the daytime on Saturdays.
00:06:30It was there that I got to see so many of the, you know, the great ones, Bruno Sammartino and, and Bob Backlund and Ivan Putzky.
00:06:38And then when I saw Jimmy Superfly Snuka.
00:06:40He had matches taped and always made us watch him when we were hanging out over his house.
00:06:45And yeah, he loved it.
00:06:47And at that point I, I started first going with my friends to the shows at Madison Square Garden and then actually going by myself.
00:06:55I heard that Jimmy Snuka and Don Morocco were going to be in the steel cage at Madison Square Garden.
00:07:01No question in my mind that I was going.
00:07:04I bought a ticket, a little over face value, but it was a great seat.
00:07:07And I got to experience that match.
00:07:11Superfly parched 15 feet high.
00:07:16Oh my God.
00:07:21And that's a moment that's, it's like indelibly etched in my mind as it is in so many people's minds.
00:07:27I don't think anybody who was there that night will ever forget that moment.
00:07:31To this day, it was the most impressive sight I'd ever seen.
00:07:34You know, definitely, he was literally bathed in both blood and flashbulb.
00:07:38And I just remember the feeling, you know, that being in New York City among strangers, but it was like this community and people were hugging and, you know, there were tears.
00:07:47And I'm in, you know, I get goosebumps now thinking about it.
00:07:52And I had this vivid thought, like, I want to make people feel the way that I feel right now.
00:08:01And if there was one driving force throughout my career, it was that moment and that continual quest to make people feel the way that I felt that night in Madison Square Garden.
00:08:17I also started really becoming a student of pro wrestling.
00:08:22I would watch everything. I videotaped everything.
00:08:26And I would study the good matches and see how guys did things.
00:08:30And I was always really impressed and captivated by things that didn't seem to have a loophole.
00:08:37Like I could see how certain things were done.
00:08:40But I was really captivated by the things I couldn't quite figure out.
00:08:45So when I was 18 or 19, I made this decision that I was going to create a style for myself that was pretty much without loopholes.
00:08:54That the viewers, they could look back time and time again on their videotape and say, I don't know how he does that.
00:09:01And the short answer is almost everything I did ended up hurting.
00:09:05You know, like that was my style.
00:09:08If it really hurt a lot, people would think it hurt a little.
00:09:12And cumulatively, they would appreciate what I was doing.
00:09:15And it would lend, my hope was that it would lend credibility to what I was doing.
00:09:20And, of course, that's a better idea at 19 than it is at, you know, 30.
00:09:26But by that time, you know, I'd become somewhat pigeonholed as the guy who took all the punishment.
00:09:35I was a sophomore in college.
00:09:37This was a year after the Superfly Snooka Leap when my dad told me that the high school was going to be hosting an independent wrestling show.
00:09:45And my dad had spoken to the promoter and said he had a son who was interested.
00:09:49The promoter said if I came down, that he would talk to me.
00:09:53And what the promoter didn't know is that some friends and I had made a video, a home video about this character, Dude Love.
00:10:02Dude, tell me about yourself.
00:10:05Let me tell you something, Dan.
00:10:07I don't think there's really any need to go into my credentials.
00:10:10I don't think there's any need to discuss who's the best wrestler in the world.
00:10:14Because very simply, you're looking at him right here.
00:10:17When I was a freshman in college, I created this alter ego, Dude Love, who was pretty much everything that I wasn't.
00:10:27But you're not talking about a regular man.
00:10:29You're talking about a man, Dude Love, who transcends the ordinary.
00:10:33A man who exudes brilliance in his every step.
00:10:36A man who played three junior varsity sports, who can bench press over 150 pounds.
00:10:41With the women, he was handsome, he was cool.
00:10:45And I started becoming this guy.
00:10:48A lot of people think I got who I am today just on natural ability, but that's not true.
00:10:53Even the dude needs some help.
00:10:55And you can get that same kind of help I got by drinking Love Potion.
00:10:59I was always somebody who loved to get reactions.
00:11:03I mean, to this day, you know, to get a reaction in any form, whether it's on stage, in the ring, doing a promo, that was always the driving force.
00:11:13And so I wanted to be that guy, Dude Love, who was going to be my ticket to success in professional wrestling.
00:11:21We're here for only one reason. One reason only.
00:11:24Fame, honor, fortune, glory.
00:11:28To destroy and to take the World Wrestling Federation belt.
00:11:32I did get a chance to attend that wrestling event at the high school, and it turned out to be one of the biggest events possible.
00:11:45Namely because the promoter got a chance to see the video that my friends and I had shot.
00:11:54Oh my god, this is iconic.
00:12:01Fully unbelievable.
00:12:04Pandemonious breaking moves.
00:12:06257 pounds of unleashed fury.
00:12:09Unbelievable, he's high.
00:12:11Never in my life have I seen such action.
00:12:14Love must be 50, 60, 70 feet in the air.
00:12:17Yeah.
00:12:23You remember what, man?
00:12:24You remember that?
00:12:26You remember that?
00:12:27And I looked over at the promoter and he just had this smile on his face like he had just discovered the next great star.
00:12:37He had no idea like how wrong he was about that and how little I knew and how long the process would be.
00:12:44But that was a big moment when Tommy D asked me if I would be on his ring crew.
00:12:49And he said that he knew a wrestler named Dominic DiNucci.
00:12:52And Dominic would train me after I set up the ring.
00:12:56And the ring building process, when you do it by yourself, driving down from Cortland, New York to Brooklyn, about 200 miles,
00:13:05going up to the 8th floor of a storage building, I had to take each piece of the ring out of the storage unit piece by piece,
00:13:12put it into an elevator piece by piece, bring it down, unload it piece by piece.
00:13:18But it was, even though it was a 22 hour, remember that first night, it was, you know, 22 hours.
00:13:23I just exhausted.
00:13:24You know, I got $25 and I got my first wrestling lesson, which consisted of Dominic really, you know, testing my will, not abusing me, but pushing me.
00:13:36And he kept saying, you want to be a wrestler. So you want to be a wrestler.
00:13:41He came in and he told me, um, I want to be a wrestler.
00:13:46I look at him. I said, well, I said, you got a lot of work to do.
00:13:49But every time there was a show, I was there, I was setting up the ring.
00:13:53Sometimes we didn't get the ring set up in time.
00:13:55So there were weekends where I would drive down and not get a chance to wrestle.
00:14:00But after about four months, he told me he had some students that he was training in Pittsburgh.
00:14:06And he asked me if I wanted to join them.
00:14:09Had I any geographic sense at the time, that would have been the end.
00:14:14That would have been the end of my, uh, my wrestling career because, um, Pittsburgh was 350 miles from Cortland.
00:14:24But I started taking that drive almost every weekend.
00:14:27I'd say three out of four weekends, I went to, uh, Pittsburgh.
00:14:31And I, so I more or less abandoned like the college party life.
00:14:36I never went to a spring break.
00:14:37You know, my spring breaks were spent wrestling in Ohio and West Virginia.
00:14:41Some of my friends, sometimes they come watch there.
00:14:46And, uh, what I tell them, Mickey Forty come from the college, go to college in Syracuse, New York.
00:14:52And he said, he looked at me and he said, is something wrong with him?
00:14:57I said, no, no.
00:14:58I said, he want to learn.
00:15:00So, you know, so you have to take care of that man.
00:15:03Dominic, I will say, took me under his wing.
00:15:08He'll be the first to tell you that when I got here, I couldn't tie my own shoes.
00:15:12When you came in here first, okay?
00:15:14The first month you came in here, you couldn't tie your shoes.
00:15:17Right.
00:15:18Okay?
00:15:19You were flipping over your own feet in the rain.
00:15:21It took a lot of patience on his part to teach someone something that came so easily to him that was so difficult for me.
00:15:30And he would set aside evenings.
00:15:32I would come and he would set aside evenings for just me and him to be here wrestling.
00:15:37After a month, I can see, I teach him something on a Saturday.
00:15:43The next day, he come early in the morning because he was leaving to go back to school.
00:15:48And what I teach him on a Saturday, he remember.
00:15:52And that's the way I was judging my boys.
00:15:56And I have to say that these guys working out was Shane Douglas.
00:16:02They were very fast to pick up the thing, you know.
00:16:06Based on initial appearances, you know, I just figured he'd be one of those that would come and go.
00:16:10And until we got inside that first day, you know, because he showed from the very first minutes that he walked into the school,
00:16:16that even though he didn't look to be, you know, the most athletic person or in the peak of shape, that he had heart.
00:16:25And you could see that right from the very first day.
00:16:27To most of the people in this gym, wrestling is like a dream.
00:16:31And there's very few people out there in the world who are really doing what they want to do.
00:16:36He's given me a chance to live out a dream.
00:16:39It worked out that right before I went to college for my senior year, WWE had called Dominic Tanucci asking for some extra talent.
00:16:55And so here I was, I'd had one match against Kurt Kaufman in Clarksburg, West Virginia at the Clarksburg Armory.
00:17:02And next thing I know, I'm in front of 17,000 people.
00:17:05To my right, introducing from Bloomington, Indiana, weighing 242 pounds, Jack Foley.
00:17:16I came in and it was, it was still to this day, it was one of the toughest, most painful nights of my entire career.
00:17:25Probably because I had such little experience, they wanted to ensure that the stuff looked good.
00:17:31I remember dynamite kid just dropping a headbutt on me and just, I sat up and my eyes were crossed, hurt me for weeks.
00:17:38And they hit me with a, you know, basically hit me with a bicep across the jaw.
00:17:43And it didn't look like a devastating clothesline.
00:17:45I mean, I've seen much more devastating clotheslines, but it was where it was delivered.
00:17:50And it put me in a position where I could not chew food for a month.
00:17:55It dislocated my jaw and then, and, and gave me a concussion.
00:18:01I don't remember him complaining.
00:18:03He didn't come back and say that bastard, he broke my jaw, whatever, whatever.
00:18:06It was just, I think it broke my jaw and, you know, it was just, it still was happy to be there, you know,
00:18:11just to, to be, you know, in that company learning something.
00:18:14But once the agents had seen that these two kids from Dominic's school could get in there and have these pretty decent matches,
00:18:21we started getting used over and over again.
00:18:23Word started getting around.
00:18:25By then I'd graduated college and I was doing shows in Long Island in the New York area.
00:18:29Dominic had been great with putting my name out there and recommending me.
00:18:34I remember he called the AWA from his house to recommend me.
00:18:39To take a back body drop right on that concrete had to take a lot out of it.
00:18:44I first saw Cactus Jack, he was on Dallas television.
00:18:51And there was this goofy looking guy in the ring.
00:18:55I thought, my God, you know, the first time I saw him, I thought, my God, they'll stoop to any level in Dallas to get somebody, you know.
00:19:03Where'd they get this guy, you know.
00:19:07And then I watched him.
00:19:09And for some reason I was attracted to him.
00:19:12And Eric Embry, if you're flamboyant, then I'm an aviator and everybody knows that I can't fly.
00:19:21He was so unusual and so different than anybody else in the profession.
00:19:28This Jack, what a goofy individual he is, but he certainly is tough.
00:19:33Mark, he's one of those guys, high, middle, middle, right at the middle.
00:19:36No style, no finesse.
00:19:38Doesn't care, he'll take four punches to get one.
00:19:40But that's just his style, it doesn't seem to bother him.
00:19:43Like I was doing some wild stuff, but it was that look.
00:19:47Cactus Jack, a madman of his own proportion.
00:19:51And I had that look in my eye.
00:19:53And that look, you know, would allow people to suspend disbelief.
00:19:57Like, okay, he might not be as big and as strong as some of those guys, but he's, he might be crazy.
00:20:04You don't mess around with a guy.
00:20:07That look will bring you a long way.
00:20:09And I had that look like he's crazy, but he enjoyed himself and it made my matches stand out.
00:20:15The always dangerous and unpredictable, Cactus Jack Manson.
00:20:20Manson, I think, has less regard for his body, his own body, than any wrestler I have seen in a long, long time.
00:20:27I ended up driving to Atlanta uninvited for a TV taping.
00:20:33Shane Douglas was one of the dynamic dudes at the time.
00:20:36Shane had told me, come on down.
00:20:38We spoke all the time.
00:20:39In fact, Mick and I had, up to a very, you know, certain point later in our careers,
00:20:44any time we were offered something or had some, you know, offer made to us or an opportunity,
00:20:49we would call each other and say, hey, this is what's being offered and this is the company
00:20:53and what do you think and this is what they want to do, what do you, you know,
00:20:56we'd give each other input on what was happening and we were that close of friends.
00:20:59So, I'd called Mick and I said, if you get a chance, you know, bring your gear and come down.
00:21:04I didn't know if there was any opportunity to get him onto the card, but I knew if he was there and he had his gear,
00:21:09there was a great likelihood we could get him on.
00:21:11But I showed up and enough guys had seen me in world class.
00:21:16They knew about the elbow I did.
00:21:18Jim Cornette was a big fan.
00:21:19He was part of the booking committee.
00:21:21And they told me to come back in two weeks when they had their next taping.
00:21:26I saw my name on the blackboard against the Steiners.
00:21:32Rick and Scott Steiner, they were like animals, you know.
00:21:35I mean, they had great matches with top talent, but they could be pretty rough, you know.
00:21:42And I'll never forget that Kevin Sullivan came up to me and he said, brother, what's your finish?
00:21:48Like, what's my finish?
00:21:50Like, I'm working with the Steiners.
00:21:52Like, I don't think I'm going to get any offense in, let alone a finishing move.
00:21:55And I said, well, I drop an elbow.
00:21:58He goes, an elbow is your finish?
00:22:00Jim Cornette heard it.
00:22:02He goes, Kevin, you've got to see this.
00:22:04He goes, it's the damnedest thing you've ever seen.
00:22:06He puts a guy on the concrete and does this and that.
00:22:08And Kevin goes, brother, I don't care how badly Ricky and Scottie hurt you.
00:22:16At the end of that match, I want you to get up and I want you to do that elbow on your partner.
00:22:23And I just went to myself, oh, my God.
00:22:38And when he got in the back, I just walked up, introduced myself to him and I said, you know, you just have, you got no sense at all.
00:22:47He said, never forget it.
00:22:49He said, no, Arne, I got no dollars at all.
00:22:52And that cleared it up.
00:22:55It got people talking.
00:22:57You know, it was an unusual way to debut.
00:23:00Although not everybody agreed or enjoyed my style, I always felt fortunate that people could see something in me like they saw the desire.
00:23:09A guy that's very, very deranged, very unorthodox.
00:23:14He does a lot of things.
00:23:15He puts his body in a lot of jeopardy.
00:23:17I didn't think that Mick Foley would be walking past the age of 30 when I first started seeing him because he was taking just ludicrous, crazy bumps.
00:23:27And that was what he was getting known for.
00:23:30And I was really worried that he wasn't going to succeed at first and end up crippled.
00:23:37You know, I don't even think Cactus Jack knows if he's getting hurt or not.
00:23:41He just seems oblivious at times to pain.
00:23:44When you really thought you had him down and out, Mick would get back up.
00:23:48And he took some unreal risk with maneuvers out of the ring where it looked like it killed him.
00:23:55And the next thing you know, Mick is still coming at you.
00:23:58Cactus Jack, as we have said, is a double tough individual.
00:24:01Takes a lot of chances.
00:24:02And he's involved in a lot of big collisions.
00:24:05He has a very, very high threshold of pain and takes a lot of chances in the ring.
00:24:09He knew to be successful because of his atypical body type that he had to be unique.
00:24:16He had to be very, very different.
00:24:18This Cactus Jack, he's one in a million. He's one in a million.
00:24:23I was a big fan of his. He was one of the greatest psychologists I've ever seen.
00:24:27He was a ridiculous bum taker.
00:24:29He looked insane and he certainly wrestled like a madden.
00:24:34He was doing these moves, going out over the top clotheslining somebody over the top rope and going out with them and landing harder than the fellow that was getting hit.
00:24:45Cactus Jack has burnt the candles at both ends and in the middle.
00:24:49So Mick had to be extreme in the true sense of the word to get noticed.
00:24:55And he damn sure did that.
00:24:58There's a lot of pages here in the wrestling wrap up and not one of them about Cactus Jack.
00:25:03But you ask any person that I've ever left laying in a heap of their own unconsciousness and they'll tell you that Cactus Jack is front page news.
00:25:13You know, I was becoming very, very likable.
00:25:16And had I stayed, I think that that would have run its course and I would have had a nice, a nice little run as a middle, you know, bottom middle of the card.
00:25:26A good guy.
00:25:27But sometimes it's funny how fate plays a hand.
00:25:30Ole Anderson came in and he took over the booking duties and he was not a fan of my style or my work or me personally, at least for a while.
00:25:40It turned out to be absolutely the best thing that could have happened to me because I was able to leave WCW.
00:25:47And that's a tough decision to make when you actually are now making, you know, at that time, $1,500 a week was about a 500% raise from what I'd been making in continental or world class.
00:26:02And when you have a chance to work national television and work in big arenas and you willingly give that up, it's a big step.
00:26:09When I went back to the independence, I mean, I did it with a definite goal in mind.
00:26:15I mean, both for the character to be taken more seriously.
00:26:19And also, I mean, I wanted to steal every show I was on.
00:26:23I mean, that should be everybody's goal at every time.
00:26:26And, you know, I would leave, you know, these gymnasiums looking like a hurricane and hit them sometimes, you know.
00:26:33I'd had my first taste of Japan.
00:26:35I'd gone over and worked for All Japan.
00:26:38Mick made a lot of international pub during that time because, and the footage would get back.
00:26:46So some of us that were scouting and looking for new guys and looking for new matches and trying to learn what else is trendy in the other parts of the world,
00:26:56Mick's name just kept popping back up.
00:26:59For nine years, people have told me, Cactus Jack, you're nothing but a psycho.
00:27:09They told me I was some kind of warped loser.
00:27:12But now it's time for me to tell you something about Cactus Jack.
00:27:18You can beat me.
00:27:20You can hurt me.
00:27:22I'm telling you with all the will in this twisted mind, you can't stop Cactus Jack.
00:27:28When I had an opportunity to come back to WCW, about 15 months later, I came back as Cactus Jack, but it was a much different character.
00:27:38And it was mostly a question of confidence.
00:27:42You know, I had it.
00:27:44So getting Mick hired that second time was really a layup.
00:27:48There was no question when I arrived back in WCW that I expected to be taken seriously.
00:27:54And I remembered the powers that be saying, look, we've got a number one guy, which would be Sting.
00:28:00We don't have a strong number two, and we think you can be that guy.
00:28:04And we felt that Mick was excellent for Sting because he was bigger than Sting.
00:28:10He put Sting in jeopardy.
00:28:12And so when he came up to me and, wait a second, hey, you have any ideas?
00:28:16I've got a lot of ideas.
00:28:18You know, this is a guy I wouldn't have felt comfortable talking to like that 15 months earlier.
00:28:22But I had that confidence, and he just looked at me like I was crazy.
00:28:27He was like, you expect Sting, a guy who's been used on top, to do this with a guy nobody's ever heard of?
00:28:33And I went, yes.
00:28:35And WCW was a company at the time that was not drawing particularly well on the road,
00:28:40but they had strong television numbers.
00:28:42So on their Clash of the Champions, several million people would see this special.
00:28:47And I attacked Sting. I came out of a gift box.
00:28:51Oh, wait a minute! It's Cactus Jack!
00:28:53And I remember being in that box and, you know, literally praying because I knew that it was the biggest moment of my career.
00:28:59He's attacking Sting! Cactus Jack above us here!
00:29:04Hey, get him off the—he's a rat on top! Watch this guy!
00:29:09If there was ever a time to deliver the elbow of a career, this was it.
00:29:14Oh, my God! Off the top, the second turnbuckle! Can you believe that? His elbow driven right into the heart of Sting!
00:29:23That move, if you can make a guy with one move, that was what made me.
00:29:28Sting was our guy. He was the it guy. But he needed a new villain to test the water with.
00:29:34And Mick did things that the other villains that worked with Sting had not done.
00:29:39He got him! That elbow flushed in the midsection!
00:29:44Mike Bay!
00:29:46The best matches and the best programs are the ones that benefit both guys.
00:29:50Sting was a top guy, but he'd grown a little bit stale and needed an opponent.
00:29:56And it was a shot in the arm to him. It was a career maker for me.
00:30:01Sting has a front face lock! Can he get him up? Oh, yeah!
00:30:05He put me on the national map in those matches.
00:30:08They were really good matches on a nightly basis.
00:30:14JR, as an announcer, he really got across the message that,
00:30:18hey, this guy may not be winning matches, but he's somebody to be taken seriously.
00:30:23Cactus Jack, a man that just doesn't care to put his own body in jeopardy to accomplish his goal.
00:30:30He brought a lot of credibility to my character.
00:30:33And like any bad guy who does a good job, you know, I eventually started getting cheered.
00:30:41He's one of those people, you just, you can't help but like him.
00:30:45I have kind eyes.
00:30:47And even if they're wild and glaring, like, after a while people got the idea, like, he's a pretty good guy.
00:30:54And they also understood completely that I was delivering way above and beyond the norm, really for their entertainment.
00:31:03And they appreciated that.
00:31:05He hurt himself. I landed on the concrete.
00:31:07I think so. I think the man that got the brunt of that was Cactus Jack.
00:31:09That's who he is. Mick displayed his willingness to endure pain, to entertain these people, and they loved him for it.
00:31:17And that's his sacrifice to the fans.
00:31:21Oh, God! Right on the concrete!
00:31:23Oh, no!
00:31:24Right on the back of his head on the concrete!
00:31:25That's not real words to describe what he was, because it was a very unique style that he had.
00:31:31He just wanted to be the one and only.
00:31:34Cactus Jack was the craziest man of the world!
00:31:37Everyone in WCW had pigeonholed him as a bruiser-brody, Abdullah the Butcher-style brawler.
00:31:45No human being could get back up after that, but he's doing it!
00:31:50Mick had so much more to offer, and he had so much talent that nobody truly understood.
00:31:58Can't hurt Cactus Jack!
00:32:00He was gonna make a name for himself, one way or the other.
00:32:04You could see the desire in his eyes that people will never forget me.
00:32:09My head's been hurt! My pancreas punished!
00:32:12I've never felt this bad in my life, but I've never been happier!
00:32:16The problem I encountered is that for well over a year, the audience had been told, repeatedly,
00:32:21he loves the pain, he enjoys the pain.
00:32:24Wooden crate there. Oh, my!
00:32:26I'm a man! Twisted in the range, yeah, but a man nonetheless!
00:32:31And now it became difficult to have sympathy for a guy who was supposed to have loved and enjoyed pain.
00:32:37Which, by the way, I don't. You know, that's never been the case.
00:32:41It's certainly not true now.
00:32:43Vader!
00:32:44You're next!
00:32:46You're next!
00:32:47Or Halloween having you get the guts!
00:32:50Because you're next!
00:32:51Baby!
00:32:52He had the creativity, he had the mind to create situations in his head, and then he had enough courage to carry it out.
00:32:59Vader was the one guy, because he was so big and so intimidating and so believable.
00:33:04I mean, he hit so hard.
00:33:06He's eating people up!
00:33:08One at a time!
00:33:10Two at a time!
00:33:11It doesn't seem to matter!
00:33:13He's an instrument of destruction, and people are being hurt!
00:33:16And I like that!
00:33:18Jack had the ability to look me right in the eye and fight me punch for punch, blow for blow.
00:33:24He would just get you in the corner with his forearms, and he would tee off, I mean, as hard as he possibly could, both sides of the head.
00:33:30Vader is a proven commodity, big, massive man.
00:33:35He's arguably the most athletic, super heavyweight ever.
00:33:39We got great reactions, and it wasn't like, okay, he's doing something he loves, getting beaten up.
00:33:45I mean, people felt sympathy for me.
00:33:48I was honored and privileged to work with Jack, and as I get older and look back, you know, you look at yourself, and you look at your opponent, and you go, wow.
00:33:59We actually did that.
00:34:01You see, Vader, I know what goes inside that sick head of yours.
00:34:05You're like a big game hunter, yeah.
00:34:07I had a shovel I was gonna use, and I remember Harley Race looking at me, he goes,
00:34:12if you don't hit him, talking about Vader, I'll come back here and hit you.
00:34:19So he put the fear of Harley into me.
00:34:22And when I came out there, Vader was doing his thing, I feel no pain, I feel it.
00:34:27And I hit him as hard as I could with that metal scoop shoveling.
00:34:30I went, I feel no pain, I feel, ah!
00:34:32He screamed.
00:34:33Cactus Jack's got a shovel!
00:34:35Cactus Jack's nothing!
00:34:36He has Vader!
00:34:37Oh, he race in the face!
00:34:39He has over the back!
00:34:41Cactus Jack!
00:34:42His back three minutes!
00:34:43I mean, I commenced to swing in that thing.
00:34:46Cactus Jack is swinging away!
00:34:49I mean, I've never been hit so hard in my life.
00:34:52You see, when steel met human flesh, you did feel pain.
00:34:56I was expecting more people to come out of the back, and apparently guys were just refusing,
00:35:02you know?
00:35:03There was a, go, go, no, no, I'm not going.
00:35:07He gave and he took.
00:35:09Because when you hit me with a shovel that hard, you have to understand and realize that,
00:35:14you know, that's going to come back to you.
00:35:16Fear is a very human feeling.
00:35:18Cactus Jack feels fear all the time.
00:35:21Fear that maybe I've run out of miracles.
00:35:23That maybe Van Vader's going to give me the beating I can't get up from.
00:35:27Fear that maybe I've thrown myself in concrete floors one too many times!
00:35:32That became like my big rivalry, and I would gear up for those matches as if they were the biggest matches of my life.
00:35:41You know, which they were.
00:35:43Mick could feed off of the things that Vader did.
00:35:47Take these, you know, hellacious bumps to enhance Vader's power and his awesomeness.
00:35:54This is the type of athlete that maybe we need in there with Van Vader, the kind of man that can really upset Vader.
00:36:01The Vader Cactus Jack, it was definitely the hottest thing in wrestling, period.
00:36:07Those matches were brutal, and Mick was determined to be the most brutalized victim of Big Van Vader.
00:36:16Several times when I powerbond him on the cement floor.
00:36:19I truly used to worry about it a lot because of the amount of punishment it inflicts on itself.
00:36:25There was a fight, or a match, let's just call it what it was, it was a fight.
00:36:29And I purposely didn't wear my gloves.
00:36:31And we went out, and I know I closed his eye.
00:36:34I know there was a large gash, you know, that required several stitches.
00:36:37His nose was definitely broken three or four places.
00:36:40When I was on Vader's back, and he essentially crushed me, I had a Lloyd's of London insurance policy.
00:36:48I was honestly tired of politics.
00:36:51I'd worked so hard.
00:36:52I knew things were not looking up.
00:36:55And that essentially was going to be the end of my career.
00:36:58It wasn't the first time people had used me to capitalize on insurance policies of that nature.
00:37:03I don't know if that's a good thing to have a rep quite like that.
00:37:05A reputation where people use you to get out of the business.
00:37:09And then I was like, oh, I can move.
00:37:12Like, oh, ah, you know, and I went to a few doctors.
00:37:16And of course there were some things wrong with me.
00:37:18But I never was able to cash in on that, you know, that Lloyd's of London insurance policy.
00:37:28I remember thinking, like, I've never reached this height before, and I never will again.
00:37:38Because I knew that from that point on, you know, I was going to be put on the back burner.
00:37:45The decision to leave really wasn't a certainty until I lost my ear.
00:37:51And on this particular night in Germany, I didn't know one of the earlier wrestlers said the ropes were too loose.
00:37:58So the ring crew, which was actually a rock and roll crew, wasn't a real wrestling ring crew.
00:38:03They tightened the ropes up.
00:38:05This was a move I probably should have taken out of the repertoire.
00:38:08And so when I did my move, I thought, I can't get out of here.
00:38:12I knew I was injured.
00:38:13Between him and the referee managed to get himself out.
00:38:16Seemed like minutes, but it was really just seconds.
00:38:19And I believe the ear was partially torn off at that point.
00:38:22And I knew that back of the ear is cartilage, not likely to bleed.
00:38:26And yet here I was, just this pitter patter of bright red blood.
00:38:30And I thought to myself, this has got to be pretty bad.
00:38:33We got in there and, you know, I ended up firing up a comeback.
00:38:38And what I didn't know was that as I did, I blocked a punch.
00:38:42I threw a punch and my ear fell off.
00:38:45I always had been of the opinion that I didn't rip his ear off, that the ropes didn't.
00:38:49And I was just showed a tape where it actually showed me ripping the ear off.
00:38:52So either my memory is convenient or I'm getting thin out.
00:38:57You have to watch and maybe put it on slow-mo, but I actually did rip his ear off.
00:39:02And I felt back, whoa, that bad boy's gone, you know, it's gone.
00:39:08And so the referee who picked up my ear was French, spoke no English,
00:39:13and wasn't able to tell me he had my ear.
00:39:15But he handed it to ring announcer Gary Michael Capetta,
00:39:18who brought it to the back and he told Ric Flair,
00:39:21I have Cactus Jack's ear, what would you like me to do with it?
00:39:26And I later asked him, what did it look like?
00:39:28He said, it looked like a piece of uncooked chicken with tape on it.
00:39:33Because I knew I was going to do this move, so I had taped up the back of my ear.
00:39:36Apparently, you know, didn't take enough precaution.
00:39:39And I got to the first hospital and they didn't have room for me.
00:39:43Got to the second hospital.
00:39:45And again, only in wrestling, you know, can you say, you know,
00:39:50.
00:39:55Which means, please don't forget to bring my ear in the plastic bag.
00:39:59I didn't realize that it was pushed off instead of cut off.
00:40:04And therefore, you know, it had been too badly damaged.
00:40:06So they did like four hours of plastic surgery to make it look pretty much like a really small ear.
00:40:13You know, it doesn't, it's not like grotesque.
00:40:15You know, you look at the good one, you look at that one.
00:40:17It's not hideous.
00:40:18It's just odd.
00:40:19It's a little, a little bit weird.
00:40:21The comfort of me was knowing that I was lucky enough to be in the one profession
00:40:26where losing an ear is not necessarily a bad thing.
00:40:30Like this is a, you know, this is a wrestling booker's dream.
00:40:35No question in my mind that getting in the ring with a microphone
00:40:40and getting revenge on the man responsible for costing my ear would have been big money.
00:40:47And that was not what was wanted from me.
00:40:51The feud was diminished and taken away from us.
00:40:56Certainly the wrestling fan wanted it.
00:40:58And Jack and I both felt it should have continued on for a long, long time.
00:41:04There was nothing done with it.
00:41:06And so I gave my, you know, I gave my notice.
00:41:10At the time I decided to leave WCW, I had two small children.
00:41:20And I left a guaranteed contract without telling my wife.
00:41:24Like I didn't discuss that.
00:41:26I made up my mind.
00:41:28I had a bigger picture.
00:41:30And I really, I had a belief in myself that I hadn't traveled this far on my journey
00:41:37to have it end, you know, at one person's whim.
00:41:41And so, you know, I took the bold step of leaving and trying out the independence.
00:41:48I had a job waiting for me in ECW.
00:41:51Paul Heyman was a big supporter of mine.
00:41:54Nick brought an unadulterated, uninhibited style.
00:41:58A willingness to sacrifice that others had to match.
00:42:03And he raised the bar in terms of sacrifice when it came to the ECW locker room.
00:42:10This is Eastern Championship Wrestling.
00:42:13It's not for everyone, but apparently it's for Cactus Jack.
00:42:17He may have found a new home.
00:42:19Mick brought credibility to the ECW locker room
00:42:23because fans around the world knew him as Cactus Jack.
00:42:27He was a star.
00:42:29Even if he was not a top star in WCW,
00:42:32he was a star who had serious TV time.
00:42:36His style was also suited perfectly for the early days of ECW
00:42:42when it was all about being extreme
00:42:45and all about being physical and getting everyone's attention.
00:42:49He may be the most hardcore wrestler in the history of all mankind.
00:42:54I think I did certainly my best microphone work in ECW.
00:43:03I had some anger and frustration.
00:43:06I mean, I would see the parade of guys who came into WWE.
00:43:10So some dumb gimmicks, things that anyone could tell wasn't really going to work.
00:43:16It was offensive to me that the phone wasn't ringing.
00:43:20But there was a lot of frustration.
00:43:22And luckily for me, there was no Twitter available.
00:43:25So I wouldn't have an instant outlet like, oh, no one will hire.
00:43:29What I had was an ability to let things build in my mind,
00:43:33not claiming this is healthy emotionally.
00:43:36And then I would let out very real emotion in these wrestling interviews.
00:43:42You ripped out my heart.
00:43:44You took everything I believed in.
00:43:46And you flushed it down the damn toilet.
00:43:49You flushed my heart.
00:43:51You flushed my soul.
00:43:54And now it sickens me to sit back and see other people making the same mistake.
00:43:59You see, Tommy Diver, I gotta listen to my little boy every day of my life.
00:44:06Say, Daddy, I miss Atlanta.
00:44:09And I say it's too bad, son, because your dad traded in the Victorian house
00:44:14for a sweat box in Long Island.
00:44:17Your dad traded in a hundred thousand dollar contract.
00:44:26Guaranteed money, insurance, respect, and the name on the dotted line
00:44:36of the greatest man in the world to work for a scumbag who operates
00:44:44out of a little piss-ant pawn shop in Philadelphia.
00:44:48We were shooting the very first Mick Foley Cactus Jack villain promos.
00:44:54And we knew we struck gold five seconds after the camera went on.
00:44:59He just hit.
00:45:01It was like nothing.
00:45:02It was a transformation.
00:45:04The problem with being hardcore is, by the very nature of the name,
00:45:11we give of ourselves, of our bodies, of our hearts, and of our souls.
00:45:21And for each one of us who gives, there's bloodthirsty low-life fans out there
00:45:27only willing to take.
00:45:29Mick.
00:45:30Mick really proved himself to be a fantastic writer, even an actor.
00:45:35By writing that verbiage, that dialogue, and reciting it so perfectly in terms of timing,
00:45:43and inflection, and facial expressions, it made for fantastic television.
00:45:49So we enter the world of professional wrestling where Cactus Jack began to carve out his own style.
00:45:56A style based on blood.
00:45:58A style based on sweat and more than a few tears.
00:46:02And we enter the dressing room in Canton, Ohio in 1989.
00:46:08And one of the most revered figures in the history of our sport walks up to me after a particularly grueling match and says,
00:46:15no one cares about you.
00:46:18No one cares about your style.
00:46:21And with a certain gleam in his eye, he told me, not as a prediction, but as fact,
00:46:27you'll be in a wheelchair by the time you're 30.
00:46:30Well, I've got one week to go.
00:46:33And I've been doing it my way.
00:46:36The concrete way.
00:46:38While I was wrestling in ECW, I had the opportunity to go to Japan for the first time since 1991.
00:46:44One of my key goals in wrestling was to really make a difference somewhere.
00:46:51And I couldn't prove that I'd actually done that.
00:46:55Like, you know, you could say, okay, this rating went up two tenths of a point in WCW.
00:47:00But it wasn't like, you know, the company would fold if I left.
00:47:04I hadn't, you know, I hadn't popped the territory as they say in wrestling.
00:47:09And once I heard that Terry Funk had jumped to IWA Japan, a small group that was based on blood and guts,
00:47:18I decided to make that jump.
00:47:21The matches would just get too extreme and too dangerous.
00:47:27And they did on several occasions.
00:47:30And I know we went to the hospital too many times after.
00:47:34And just out of, you know, compassion for the quality of the product that we were going to put out there.
00:47:48Because we were in the ring together and we were going to be the best.
00:47:53We did things to each other that just weren't humane.
00:48:00That same move that cost me my ear, well, I tried that again, but in barbed wire.
00:48:05So I didn't learn lessons, you know, quickly.
00:48:08And it never occurred to me that my weight would cause the barbed wire, like it wouldn't hold me.
00:48:15And so the wire collapsed and I ended up hanging, you know, like hanging.
00:48:20And both my fingers were caught up in the barbed wire when I, you know, I pulled those fingers out.
00:48:25It was just hideous, you know.
00:48:27We got to the back.
00:48:28Terry Funk and I had this, you know, amazing match in a cold arena in front of a very small crowd.
00:48:34And Tracy Smothers was helping me, like, pour the antiseptic.
00:48:37Literally, you could see the bones in my pinkies, you know, pouring it in, taping it up.
00:48:43And then you get on the bus and it's just this horrible stench of, you know, stale blood.
00:48:50It's this iron smell.
00:48:52And we did make a difference.
00:48:54We put that little promotion on the map.
00:48:56We ended up having almost 30,000 fans at the baseball stadium.
00:49:00And Terry and I had the final match, no rope, barbed wire with explosions, C4 laced to barbed wire.
00:49:12And I left that match in much worse shape than I entered it.
00:49:18But I was the king of the death match.
00:49:20Mick was special to me.
00:49:22And I wanted to help him in every way that I could.
00:49:25And here was Mick, a young kid.
00:49:28You want to pass it on to somebody.
00:49:34And you want to pass it on to a person that you think is going to be a plus to the profession.
00:49:42And that's who I was passing it on to.
00:49:46I was passing the hat.
00:49:49And I wouldn't have done it for anybody else.
00:49:52It was Jim Ross who called me from WWE.
00:49:59I kept pitching and pitching Mick to Vince.
00:50:02Because I knew in my mind, once Vince saw Mick, he would like it.
00:50:06Secondly, once Vince got to know Mick on an individual basis, he would love the guy.
00:50:13After all these many years, I'm finally creating my very own symphony of destruction.
00:50:25When I showed up at WWE offices for my first meeting with Mr. McMahon, there was an illustration of a guy in like an iron mask.
00:50:35And I honestly thought, I thought it was meant for somebody else.
00:50:38I went home, I was not sold on the idea.
00:50:41To the point where I actually called up J.R.
00:50:44And we talked for a couple of hours.
00:50:46I agreed to do the mask.
00:50:48The mask changed somewhat because you couldn't wear an iron mask.
00:50:51I was when we came up with the idea of mankind.
00:50:54I could talk about the future of mankind.
00:50:56The destruction of mankind.
00:50:58And Vince would nod and he would shake his head.
00:51:01I just felt that mankind was going to be really just Cactus Jack.
00:51:07It was Mick who then totally decided to even make that character very different from Cactus Jack.
00:51:15Gopher broke once he got here.
00:51:17And he also knew that powers that be kind of are looking for different sculpted superstars
00:51:26and different kind of looks.
00:51:30Maybe I could have two different pieces of music.
00:51:34An entrance theme and an exit theme.
00:51:36Weighing 287 pounds.
00:51:40Mankind!
00:51:43Until the moment I walked out from my first match, I didn't know what my name was going to be.
00:51:49I've got a folder from my first WrestleMania that says mutilator on it.
00:51:53And I came out and I was mankind.
00:51:56And when the match was over, I heard some beautiful piano music coming in.
00:52:05And it turns out, you know, they had gone with pretty much everything I had suggested.
00:52:10It was really important to me that I make this character feel as real as he could.
00:52:17He's done.
00:52:18Look at this, McMahon!
00:52:19Look at this, McMahon!
00:52:20Look at this, McMahon!
00:52:21We saw Mankind!
00:52:22In the opening matchup!
00:52:23Look at this, Mankind taking advantage of the weakened state of the Undertaker.
00:52:26Look out!
00:52:27Look out, look out down below, look out!
00:52:30Oh my gosh!
00:52:31We saw Mankind in the opening matchup.
00:52:35Look at this. Mankind taking advantage of the weakened state of The Undertaker.
00:52:40Look out! Look out! Look out! Down below! Look out!
00:52:43Oh, my gosh!
00:52:46Anything positive I say about Mankind without including The Undertaker's role in making Mankind would be, you know, kind of foolish.
00:52:55What?
00:52:55Hey!
00:52:56I went to Milwaukee for King of the Ring in June 1996 to wrestle The Undertaker.
00:53:07I just, I never believed I had a, you know, there was a chance of me gaining a W.
00:53:14The winner of this podcast, Mankind!
00:53:19I thought that was my one match. I didn't know it would just be the start or something.
00:53:23Mick was put to the test right away against The Undertaker.
00:53:28I don't know if he was intimidated by that challenge, but I thought he handled it superbly.
00:53:33The way that Mick was so unselfish and giving of himself was well received by The Undertaker, to say the least.
00:53:41Where was the crazy psycho Mankind willing to go? And is he willing to go further than the dead man?
00:53:46They had a lot of trust for each other.
00:53:49Boiler Room Brawl, I was there when we recorded it. That was brutal, man.
00:53:53It's kind of like my unloved child of matches, you know. I don't think people appreciated it.
00:53:59I think there were still a lot of people who missed Cactus Jack. Those fans who knew Cactus Jack missed him.
00:54:09Like, they didn't see Mankind as being the real me. And I think mind games changed a lot of minds.
00:54:16I am wrestling the wackiest cat that the World Wrestling Federation has ever, ever seen.
00:54:25Mick was fantastic to be in the ring with.
00:54:28It was brutal, it was physical, but it was really creative.
00:54:31Like, there was some really cool stuff that hadn't been done before or after.
00:54:36What I remember more than anything about that match was the creativity, the different kind of creativity that Mick brought to the match.
00:54:44Suplexing him on the outside of the ring. Been done. But having his leg swing over and...
00:54:52Oh! He had his leg! Mick on his knee! Struck the steel steps!
00:54:59That is a perfect example of the wrestling style of Mick Foley. It's wrestling dialed up to 11.
00:55:06It's a little bit more violent. It's a little bit more crazy.
00:55:09Him bringing in all these different elements, pulling up the mat, and having me jump on it and stomp on it.
00:55:16A number of different things that we did in this match that a WWE crowd and a pay-per-view crowd had not seen, had not been exposed to.
00:55:26And it made Shawn Michaels, the Hartley Kid, look a ton more aggressive.
00:55:30Gave him an edge that he didn't have at that time.
00:55:32And I'm really flattered that Shawn gives that match credit for letting people see him in a different light.
00:55:41That is Mick Foley, and that's one of my favorite matches of all time.
00:55:44Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels, and Mind Games. It doesn't get any better than that.
00:55:51That was the match that I looked to as being the greatest match of my career for a long time.
00:55:59Somehow, Mr. McMahon had come to feel that my actual life story was more interesting than the fictional one we'd created as mankind.
00:56:13Over the next few weeks, I'm going to take you on a different kind of odyssey.
00:56:17A 26-year journey of a young boy named Mick Foley.
00:56:21Boyhood dreams turned into a living hell.
00:56:23You know, I'd worked too hard on the character.
00:56:26Like, I thought it was almost there.
00:56:28And I came up with the idea.
00:56:30I said, what if I do the interview?
00:56:34All the answers will be legitimate answers, but I will do them in character.
00:56:44I wanted to hear people cheer for me because of some act of bravery that I committed.
00:56:49So I ascended up onto my friend's roof, and I dove off.
00:56:59It was long, and it was good.
00:57:01Like, there was a lot of good stuff there.
00:57:03And they divided it up into five segments.
00:57:07Every time I put on the mandible claw, in my mind, that's Vince McMahon.
00:57:13And I'm saying, why didn't you take me when I was good?
00:57:17Why didn't you take me when I was young?
00:57:20I rode with Stone Cold Steve Austin to one of the towns after the first segment had aired.
00:57:28And he goes, what, are they turning you baby-faced, kid?
00:57:30No, I just think it's a way for, you know, the people to get to know the character a little bit better.
00:57:36He goes, he'll be baby-faced in two weeks.
00:57:38When my little boy says, Daddy, I want to play ball, and I can't do it.
00:57:44Is that where the fun starts?
00:57:47And it was the strangest thing, because if you look back, there was no Mick Foley, Mankind, turn.
00:57:53Just every week, more and more people were cheering me.
00:58:04They were throwing worms at me, Jimmy.
00:58:06So what do you do to retaliate?
00:58:08Do you throw the worm back at seven or eight people?
00:58:11It's not the fact they were hurting me.
00:58:13They were wounding my pride.
00:58:15So I picked up the largest specimen, Jimmy, and I sucked it down!
00:58:20People were really feeling sympathy for the character.
00:58:24They really got behind the character.
00:58:27It was good.
00:58:28And I don't think a change has ever come about that organically.
00:58:33The interview with J.R. also introduced Vince McMahon to Dude Love.
00:58:41So in my movie, I was not Mick Foley.
00:58:45I was Dude Love.
00:58:47Vince had no idea that I had wanted to be this guy.
00:58:50You know, that I had created this alter ego, who was there to be all the things that I couldn't be.
00:58:56I'll put those earrings in, and I'm going to get the girls.
00:59:00I remember getting a phone call way too early in the morning.
00:59:03And he was like, hey, pal.
00:59:05Hey, Vince, how you doing?
00:59:06How'd you like to be Dude Love?
00:59:09I was like, you mean one time?
00:59:10He was, from now on.
00:59:12I kept trying, as mankind, to come to the rescue of Stone Cold Steve Austin.
00:59:19My help was being rejected by way of the Stone Cold Stunner.
00:59:28DTA, you stupid piece of trash.
00:59:31Don't ever trust nobody.
00:59:32I guess, you know, something just snapped in mankind.
00:59:37And San Antonio, Texas, Stone Cold was in need of a tag team partner.
00:59:43And, ow, you heard this voice.
00:59:46Ow!
00:59:47Wait a minute.
00:59:47Steve-O, looks like you could use a little help, my man.
00:59:50Like, maybe a tag team partner.
00:59:53What?
00:59:53What's the matter?
00:59:53Don't you recognize me?
00:59:56Now, I don't blame you for not teaming up with that mutilated freak, mankind.
00:59:59But you never said nothing about teaming up with the hippest cat in the land.
01:00:04Steve-O, baby, it's me, Dude Love.
01:00:08And I am coming to save the day.
01:00:11Ow, have mercy.
01:00:15Steve's faces were just priceless, you know.
01:00:18It was great stuff.
01:00:19And then we won that match.
01:00:22We became the tag team champions.
01:00:24I remember thinking, like, I don't dance.
01:00:27Like, I never danced.
01:00:28My wife wishes I could dance.
01:00:32For that time period, I remember Vince McMahon saying, Dude Love makes people feel good.
01:00:39It was a nice story.
01:00:41It was a heartwarming story.
01:00:43And it coincided with this series of events I was having with Triple H.
01:00:49In one moment, I'm facing the Freddy Krueger-esque psycho, Mankind.
01:00:52And then there's Dude Love, who's, like, a complete goof.
01:00:56He's kicking me to sweet shin music.
01:00:58When I wrestled Triple H in that steel cage, and we had a good match, you know, a physical match.
01:01:03There was a section where, you know, China slammed that blue, that steel cage with the blue bars.
01:01:09It was just unforgiving.
01:01:10And I climbed up slowly, but majestically to the top of that steel cage.
01:01:23And I think it's one of these cases where people saw what they wanted to see.
01:01:27You know, they saw me on top, even though I wasn't actually on the top.
01:01:32We had the banquet at Madison Square Garden, which was the debut in WWE of Cactus Jack.
01:01:47Vince McMahon had the idea for Dude Love to interview Mankind and introduce Cactus Jack.
01:01:57Balls count anywhere.
01:01:58No disc modifications.
01:01:59Oh, have mercy, Hunter, and especially your finer china.
01:02:07I know what you must be thinking.
01:02:09Dude, what are you doing back here when you should be out there kicking some heavy-duty booty all over the garden?
01:02:16Well, Hunter, my man, I believe it's time we had a little rap.
01:02:21Oh, because you see, balls count anywhere.
01:02:24Well, that's not exactly my bag, baby.
01:02:27But I know somebody, Daddy, who's baggy, indeed is.
01:02:33He's my man.
01:02:34He's my main man.
01:02:37You might even say, well, Daddy, he's a kind man.
01:02:41A kooky type of cat.
01:02:43Let's bring him out right now.
01:02:47Oh, Mankind, my main mandible.
01:02:50Oh, I'm high, big man.
01:02:51Oh, you're too slow.
01:02:54Mankind, good to have you at the Love Shack.
01:02:56Hi, dude.
01:02:57Thanks for having me here.
01:02:58The pleasure is all mine.
01:03:00You really are eye candy for the chicks, dude.
01:03:03That much I know, Daddy, but you've got to tell me about this wacky match.
01:03:06Balls count anywhere.
01:03:07Dude, as much as I've dreamed about destroying Hunter Hearst Helmsley.
01:03:12I know you have.
01:03:13As very horrible things as I'd like to do to him.
01:03:16I know you can.
01:03:17I know someone who dreams about it even more.
01:03:19Who is it, Manny?
01:03:20Someone who's willing to do even worse things than I am.
01:03:23Oh, no.
01:03:24Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?
01:03:27I think I am thinking what you think I think you're thinking.
01:03:30Can you bring him out, Manny?
01:03:31Here he comes.
01:03:32Where is he?
01:03:34Captain Jack.
01:03:35He's back.
01:03:36Somebody spiked me.
01:03:38I thought you were engaged.
01:03:39He's alive.
01:03:40He's alive.
01:03:41It may be the darkest day of your life because it's Madison Square Garden and Mrs. Foley's
01:03:47little boy.
01:03:49Bye-bye.
01:03:49Bye-bye.
01:03:50Have fun.
01:03:50Bye-bye.
01:03:52Somebody slapped me.
01:03:53I thought he was dead.
01:03:54Drastic times call for drastic measures.
01:03:58Man, that was magic, that moment.
01:04:00You know, Mick and I had a really good chemistry.
01:04:02A lot of credit goes to Triple H for the way that he reacted to Cactus Jack.
01:04:09And whether or not everyone was aware of Cactus Jack in that arena, I'm not sure.
01:04:14But the reaction, it was phenomenal.
01:04:18And we had a great match.
01:04:20It still holds up after all these years.
01:04:22The day after WrestleMania in 1998, I believe it was the return of Sean Waltman as X-Pac.
01:04:39It was like the making of DX, you know, into like this great, you know, force.
01:04:47And that was really when the next phase of DX really took off.
01:04:53And part of that was accomplished by a pretty severe beatdown of me and Terry.
01:05:00Cactus Jack has helped us.
01:05:03DX and the outlaws are taking apart Cactus Jack and Terry Funk.
01:05:08DX and the outlaws are taking apart Cactus Jack and Terry Funk.
01:05:12No!
01:05:12No!
01:05:14Yes!
01:05:14My God!
01:05:15It's carnage!
01:05:16It was kind of humiliating.
01:05:18You know, X-Pac is actually a very, very good friend of mine now.
01:05:23But I didn't like the Bronco Buster in the corner.
01:05:26You know, like, it was kind of demeaning.
01:05:28And when I was laying down in the ring, the announcer said something about, you know,
01:05:35hey, don't go anywhere, it's stone cold, Steve.
01:05:38And it was like this feeling like I had just been through a humiliating, physically, you
01:05:47know, punishing encounter.
01:05:50And to me, it was that the fans just totally disregarding me.
01:05:57And they just, they started the stone cold chant.
01:06:01And I think even then I realized, like, I'm going to hold on to this bitterness and use
01:06:09it somewhere, you know, because it was clear to me that although I'd gotten here, you know,
01:06:14Steve was up here.
01:06:16And I accepted that, but I didn't like the fact that fans so readily chose a favorite.
01:06:27Having the opportunity to, you know, to wrestle Steve, you know, presented the chance for
01:06:37me to vent some of that frustration.
01:06:39And while Dude Love managed to have a couple of really good matches, really good matches,
01:06:45I mean, I loved those two classics we had, I believe, in April and in May of 1998.
01:06:53I think by asking our universe to accept a change from mankind to Dude Love to Cactus Jack
01:07:05back to Dude Love back to mankind in what was a pretty short order, it kind of soured people
01:07:15on me, is the way I felt.
01:07:17I felt like when I entered the Hell in a Cell in 1998 with The Undertaker, I felt, A, that
01:07:26I didn't belong in a match of that magnitude because I didn't think my character was there.
01:07:31I thought the changes had been damaging to me, and I certainly had no idea, you know, when
01:07:40I entered that cell, that no one would ever care about anything I did before or after.
01:07:53We discussed it and knew that it had to be started some way different, to be something
01:08:00special, and Mick wanted that match to be special, that I mentioned starting from the top.
01:08:08Hardly anybody backstage had any idea what was going to happen in that Hell in a Cell match
01:08:15between Foley and The Undertaker.
01:08:18My God, I had no idea that they were going to go to the extreme they did.
01:08:24They're right above us, folks, and I don't like it a damn bit.
01:08:26Look out, look out, good God almighty, good God almighty, they killed him.
01:08:34Get that, get out of the way.
01:08:44Get down, get out of the way, right?
01:08:46Black, get out of the way.
01:08:48It's just you.
01:08:50It's just you, all right?
01:08:52To me out here, can I?
01:08:53Can you please go out on the stretch?
01:08:55Death is laying down on the stretch, please.
01:08:57I will never forget where I was.
01:09:08I was in my living room at my dad's condo with about eight of my friends, and we were
01:09:14all watching, and we saw a man get thrown from the top of a Hell in a Cell cage, which
01:09:23was about 20 feet in the air onto an announce table, and all my friends were just, did that
01:09:32just happen?
01:09:33Oh, my God.
01:09:34God is my witness.
01:09:36He is broken in half.
01:09:38I remember watching that match live.
01:09:39I think it was 2 o'clock in the morning.
01:09:41I was in college, and I remember everybody, like, all of us just being, like, in absolute
01:09:46awe.
01:09:47I mean, just completely dumbfounded when he went off the top of that cage, off the Hell
01:09:51in a Cell.
01:09:52He thought he was dumb.
01:09:53It was Foley's body hitting wood, hitting concrete.
01:09:58So in my mind's eye, I'm thinking, well, an average human being cannot live through that
01:10:06ordeal.
01:10:08And obviously, Mick Foley was far from being an average human being.
01:10:12And look at him.
01:10:13You're kidding me!
01:10:14How in the hell is he standing?
01:10:15Lo and behold, somehow, Mick knowing that he's got to deliver for this audience and for the
01:10:19Undertaker, he wills himself back into this match.
01:10:20Are you kidding me?
01:10:21He wants to go back up!
01:10:22He gets off the stretcher and he climbs up to the top again.
01:10:54Good God!
01:10:55Good God!
01:10:56Good God!
01:10:57Good God!
01:10:58That's it!
01:10:59He's dead!
01:11:01Good God!
01:11:02How he lived through that, I never know.
01:11:04It was beyond belief.
01:11:06I mean, here he came down through there.
01:11:11And when he came through that ring, he hit that mat, and believe me, that mat's not soft.
01:11:17And he was out, and I knew he was hurt bad.
01:11:22His eyes were just totally glassed over.
01:11:27I was scared to death for him.
01:11:29When I go to stand up, and I can't, you know, it's sad, but it's also powerful because the
01:11:38match should have ended.
01:11:39And then I see him crawling over, he's outside the ring, and he's got a tooth in his nose,
01:11:45and he's kind of got a perverse smile on his face, like, I'm not dead yet.
01:11:52You may think I'm done, but I'm not done.
01:11:55And man, that just, that brought me completely into the whole storyline.
01:12:00That was like, this stuff is good.
01:12:06Mr. McMannan came up to me after the cell.
01:12:09I was in pretty rough shape, you know.
01:12:12My tooth had ended up in my nose.
01:12:15I had a collection of injuries from, you know, dislocated shoulder, my jaw had been injured,
01:12:20a bunch of stitches underneath my lip, bruised kidney.
01:12:26And he said, you have no idea how much I appreciate what you've done with this company,
01:12:32but I never want to see anything like that again.
01:12:35And he told me he's going to place a governor on me.
01:12:38Then he had to explain what a governor was.
01:12:41Well, you put it on a car that won't allow it to exceed a certain speed,
01:12:45because I was going faster and driving more perilously than, you know, than I should have.
01:12:53And so that set the bar, you know, ridiculously high.
01:12:57And fortunately, you know, things have changed where if a guy gets knocked out during a match,
01:13:03you know, the match ends, and rightfully so.
01:13:07But I think part of the mystique of that match and part of the emotional journey it takes viewers on
01:13:14is that that match didn't end.
01:13:16I don't know if you could ever recapture that emotion.
01:13:19You certainly can't plan it.
01:13:21It's a rollercoaster.
01:13:23For people who see more than the clips, if they actually go and watch that match, it's powerful.
01:13:29I remember seeing Mick walking the next day at TV and saying to him,
01:13:36I see those signs in the crowd, Foley is God.
01:13:39If you ain't, you're so close, because I don't know how you're walking today, dude.
01:13:44Like, I mean, hats off to you.
01:13:46I mean, no matter how it happened or what it was, you have to, I mean, hats off to the guy
01:13:57and just have to give him the ultimate respect for being willing to do that, put his body through that.
01:14:04And even after it happened to, you know, stand back up and continue on and just, you know, it's,
01:14:13it's something special, you know.
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