Pro-Wrestling Mankind Page Pro-Wrestling Mankind Page
Last updated 15 January 2000
Last Saturday night, a man named Mick Foley, a 34-year-old graduate of Ward Melville H.S. in Setauket, L.I., a hairy, pear-shaped man who makes his living in a Hannibal Lecter-style mask, was seen examining the New York Times best-seller list.
Foley's fellow nonfiction authors included former president George Bush and presidential hopeful John McCain. There were also two Pulitzer Prize winners (Frank McCourt and David Maraniss), two network anchormen (Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings) and John Glenn, the first man to orbit the earth. The Dalai Lama also made the list.
"And the professional wrestler," is kicking all their asses," said Foley, the first-time author.
More than that, he said, "the wrestler is probably the only guy who wrote his own biography, except McCourt."
"Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks" is Foley's account of Foley's journey. The lacrosse player who worshiped Jimmy (Superfly) Snuka and listened to Pink Floyd evolved, quite by accident, into Mankind, one of pro wrestling's most popular personas.
Mankind's entirely unexpected place at the top of the best-seller list demonstrates more than the publishing industry's monumental ignorance. It also provides clues as to why a generation of American boys will become men without ever having seen "Monday Night Football."
Unlike most ballplayers and politicians, Foley fired his ghostwriter: "I just wasn't comfortable with the idea that someone could make up quotes and give the impression that all the words are from me. It's embarrassing to say, coming from a pro wrestler, but that's dishonest. It's fraudulent. … I knew I was in trouble when the ghostwriter said he wrote Willie Mays' book after talking to Willie for half an hour."
So Foley did it himself, longhand onto legal sheets, enough for 503 typeset pages. "What I lack in writing skills I more than made up for in passion and humor," he said.
Sense of humor sets Foley apart — an endearing, absurdist, self-deprecating variety. How else to explain a kid who always wanted to be a wrestler, a communications major at Cortlandt State who drove his Ford Fairmont to Pittsburgh every weekend to attend wrestling school?
Foley has wrestled for money in armories and high school gyms and parking lots. He did a tour of duty in Japan. Along the way, he lost most of his right ear. He's had two herniated discs, eight concussions and severe burns from plastic explosives.
But through it all, his sense of humor remained intact. Unlike a lot of other wrestling personas, Mankind doesn't rely on sex or race or profanity for laughs. Mankind is just good, sick fun.
"I created a fictional storyline about being left in my basement when I was a kid, and being forced to take piano lessons," said Foley. "I began reading a lot of Gothic novels like Frankenstein. I liked the idea of the tormented soul who just wanted to be loved."
Mankind was intended as a bad guy, a "heel," in wrestling parlance. "But in four years Mankind went from being eerie and hated to being the World Wrestling Federation's cuddliest wrestler," said Foley.
He's wired into the audience. That's the first rule: Respect the fans; know what makes them laugh and cheer. In sports as in entertainment, fans make careers. That's why Charles Barkley, for all his excess, will be remembered more affectionately than Patrick Ewing. And that's why Mick Foley is such a hit.
He's used that monster mask and a sweat-sock puppet to great comic effect. But somewhere along the way, the fans came to regard Mankind and Mick Foley as the same guy. They like him for not being another blond muscle man. They like him because that girl in college couldn't remember his name. They like him for liking Pink Floyd and Superfly Snuka. They liked what they saw of themselves.
"The fans were much more intrigued by the truth," said Foley. "Hey, if I wrote a book about a guy whose mother locked him in the basement and made him play the piano it wouldn't have been No. 1 on the best-seller list."