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Wrestling Legend visits Star Centre this Week

Posted: Oct 31st 2006 By: CMBurnham

New Mexico Scorpions fans will be in for a special treat Friday evening before Rio Rancho's new hockey team plays host to the Youngstown SteelHounds.

Mick Foley will be dropping the ceremonial first puck, then be available for autographs and photographs.

"It's been a long time since I've been out there and I hope to see a lot of my fans," he said in a recent telephone interview.

Don't confuse this Foley with embattled Florida U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, in the mess lately for allegedly having had trysts with congressional male pages.

"He's ruined it for all the Foleys," cracked Mick Foley, 41, whom big-time wrestling fans probably know better as "Cactus Jack," from Truth or Consequences, N.M. ("I told that lie so often it became known as fact," Foley said. In truth, he's never been there), "Dude Love" or as "Mankind."

Yup. The only guy known in World Wrestling Entertainment as a "hardcore legend," and one of the most-beloved figures in the "sport" is making his first trip to Rio Rancho.

Lately, Foley, who lives with his wife and two children on Long Island, has been throwing out first pitches and dropping first pucks, and occasionally stepping through the ropes to wrestle.


"It's always fun," Foley said, adding he doesn't do it so frequently "that it seems like a job. Sometimes it is like living through (the Bill Murray movie) 'Groundhog Day.'"

So, although he may forget where he is from time to time, none of his fans will ever forget his 20-foot drop through a ringside table and onto a concrete during the "Hell in a Cell" encounter in the 1998 "King of the Ring" battle with The Undertaker.

"There is a high price to pay for landing on concrete," Foley said.

A Web page on the Internet summed up his ring injuries: six concussions, a broken jaw, two broken noses, a broken cheekbone, the loss of four front teeth, the loss of two-thirds of an ear, a separated shoulder, a fractured shoulder, a dislocated shoulder, second-degree burns, a broken right wrist, bone chips in an elbow, six broken ribs, a torn ACL, a broken toe, ACL, more than 300 stitches and "thousands of thumb-tack holes."

Foley laughs it off.



"I think I tallied it up with medical records and used estimates and, with occasional comebacks, the stitch total is larger," he said. "When you add up 20 years (of wrestling), it's not too bad on an annual basis - a third of a concussion a year."

But he also admitted, "I'm always in a state of constant pain. I wake up with a lot of aches and pains."

If you think wrestlers are big, dumb, hulking guys that can't do anything else, you're wrong. Foley, a 1987 college graduate, dispels that myth.

He has written numerous books, and his autobiography, "Have a Nice Day" soared to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list seven years ago.

He has followed that up with "Foley is Good," "Mick Foley's Christmas Chaos," "Mick Foley's Halloween Hijinx," "Tietam Brown," "Tales from Wrascal Lane," "Scooter" and, to be released in March, "The Hardcore Diaries."




Readers of "Foley is Good" will read his thoughts on his beloved sport on page 41, "Violence is everywhere. Wrestling is, and always has been, a mirror of the times we live in, and to my eyes at least, it's a fairly innocent reflection."

The new book, he said, "Is a very in-depth, behind-the-scenes account from an idea I had from its inception to its conclusion."

In other words, a script for a wrestling match. And that's where most of the battles come from, including "Hell in a Cell."

Foley goes into great detail of one such battle, the "Royal Rumble," which would take Foley (then Mankind) into the ring as the world champ, have him proclaim "I quit" to his opponent, The Rock, and exit the ring as an ex-champ.

That's the Reader's Digest version; the one in "Foley is Good" is much more detailed.

Promoter Vince McMahon wasn't sure it was a good idea.

According to Foley, "The story line I proposed would be heart-wrenching. I would be bludgeoned, I would be helpless, and my wife would be watching from the front row.

"To be helpless, I would need to be handcuffed ... (and the match would be) culminating with a series of chairshots to my unprotected skull."

As Foley worked to convince McMahon it was a good idea, he told him, "When that camera shows (his wife) Colette crying, and then cuts back to me watching her cry, the fans will be begging me to quit. We can build up the drama so that the damage seems much worse than it actually is."

The Royal Rumble was staged in January 1999 in California, which gave Foley the opportunity to treat his kids to a day at Disneyland - to soften what they'd see in the Rumble.

After the pounding he'd taken by The Rock, which included a "four-inch gully in the hairline of the right side of my head," Foley realized his kids and wife had seen something more brutal than he'd imagined.

"I guess most children don't have the opportunity to watch their dad get stitched, after getting the opportunity to see him get the crap beat out of him," Foley wrote. "At this point the Disney trade-off probably didn't seem like such a great deal."

Oddly, perhaps, what bothered Foley the most after his ordeal was that The Rock never came to see him as he recuperated.

Foley was trained by Dominic DeNucci when he learned how to wrestle. How did he learn to become a prolific writer?

"I think I attribute any writing skill I have to my mother, not only for reading to me when I was younger but she encouraged me to read," he said.

Foley didn't grow up wanting to be a professional wrestler.

"When I was 5, I guess I wanted to be the Lone Ranger - that was my answer, when anyone asked my name," he said. "Honestly, I wanted to be a food and drug inspector when I was 13 - the title sounded more exciting than the job description. I read up on being an FBI agent.

"From the age of 16 or so, I wanted to be a wrestler." That's not all: To help pay for college, I was an ice cream man when I was 20."

Recently, he said he's been toying with the idea of entering politics, which worked for former wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

Foley said he talked to the Minnesota governor, who gave him two words of advice: "Forget it."

Foley really hasn't ended his 20-year ring career, as he makes occasional return, introduced only as Mick Foley.

"I did it this past year and it worked out pretty well," he said.

He expects his appearance this week at Santa Ana Star center will work out pretty well, too.

"I know I'll be signing a lot of autographs," he said. He can't skate, he pointed out.

The Scorpions will be selling 5x7 black-and-white photographs, which Foley will happily sign for free, for $3.