One of the most effective tricks in wrestling is the use of the underdog. The classic example is 123 Kid. Advanced students will know how to tell about Rey Mysterio’s victory in the 2006 Royal Rumble, and if the name Daniel Bryan also tells you something, you have completed the course with honors. On the other hand, this plot line should be used delicately and wisely – the audience will not buy any underdog, and there is always the risk that it will be perceived as not serious, and as a result will also present the favorite that won as not serious. In other words, underdog is used in one of two cases – either when you are sure it will work, or when you are desperate and have no other choice. Now let’s talk about Mick Foley And you decide which of the two categories he belongs to.
What’s beautiful about Mick Foley is that he was an underdog even before he came to the world of wrestling. He is a real world underdog. He describes his teenage years as a slightly odd, oversized high schooler, one who finishes prom without dancing with a girl – in fact, we could label Foley as kind of a loser, if it weren’t for what did make him a relatively popular boy – his sense of humor and talent his writing.
Polly the boy’s dream was also a bit strange. When his classmates dreamed of pursuing medical and law studies or a sports career in basketball or football, Foley wanted to wrestle. From a very young age he watched every form of wrestling he could find – staged, real, professional, amateur. But it was only natural that he joined his high school’s wrestling team. The sights finally zeroed in on the WWF after attending the legendary fight between Jimmy “Superplay” Snuka and Don Muraco at Madison Square Garden in 1983, a fight made famous by Snuka’s head jump of a 5 meter high cage.
This moment immediately and permanently entered Snuka into the annals of wrestling. And obviously, everyone who was in the audience was thrilled and amazed. But not everyone in the audience decided that they, too, wanted to jump from such a cage in Madison Square Garden one day. Only our hero. And from that moment he did everything to find himself up there, on the cage, with thousands of spectators amazed, amazed and cheering. Lou, Mrs. Polly’s eldest son. But if you take into account exactly who the working soul is, you realize that this is a dream that is anything but obvious. In the glittering world of wrestling, there wasn’t really a place for a clumsy and clumsy guy, not particularly beautiful, not particularly built and not particularly agile. But that’s not what was going to stop Foley from fulfilling his dream.
As early as 1983, Foley began studying at a professional wrestling school in Pennsylvania. Considering the fact that he himself studied in New York, it was a good few hours of travel. Foley moved between nights when he slept in the car and nights when he did not sleep at all. He spent more hours at work black of building arenas than wrestling inside those arenas, and earned crumbs year after year, but before his eyes there was only one thing: a 5-meter-high cage in Madison Square Garden. It is not for nothing that one of the videos most associated with Foley is a home shot of him jumping from the roof of a garage towards a pile Cardboard boxes and mattresses. Twice. It’s just that the first photo was not good. Hey, for a moment I didn’t say that this was a sane person.
But maybe it was the lack of logic that helped him overcome obstacle after obstacle. From seemingly simple things like managers who didn’t believe in him, and wrote him fights in which he loses time and time again, to less simple things like losing an ear in a wrestling accident in Germany, Foley didn’t let anything stop him on the way to his dream. In 1996 he received the phone call that was supposed to open the most important door. Vince McMahon was on the line.
Jim Ross, one of McMahon’s top lieutenants, had followed Foley since their days together in WCW. That term did feature ridiculous plots of memory loss and electrocution accidents, but somehow, Foley made them work. He translated his writing talent and sense of humor into moments of magic on the microphone, which managed to stand out even against the background of some of the stupid moments seen in the world of wrestling. Ross remembered a youthful kindness, Foley came up with his own ideas, which he worked on for years, and McMahon gave the final green light. In 1996 Foley received the name “Mankind” – humanity.
“Mankind” was a mysterious man in a mask, disturbed in his soul, liked to sit in basements and talk to rats. He was a masochist, and as such enjoyed being hurt. This is what made him such a challenging opponent in the ring. Some say Foley actually created a character that is the darker version of Undertaker. His monologues were mesmerizing, his performances in the arena were so unusual in the landscape that you couldn’t take your eyes off him. After 13 years and one chance, Foley became a star. But it still wasn’t enough. The cage was still waiting for him.
If you believe in fate, you’ll believe Polly’s popularity peaked just in time. In the summer of 1997, he was already too overrated to remain “Hill”, a dark villain, and became “Pace”, the audience’s favorite. Spectators learned to appreciate his investment and uniqueness just in time for SummerSlam 1997, which, luckily for Foley, was held in the dream theater of wrestling in general, and his in particular – Madison Square Garden. As if there was any other option, the fight scheduled for Foley was a cage fight.
Everything was ready, his opponent, Triple H, was lying on the ground. Just like Jimmy Snuka in 1983, Foley slowly climbed the cage, letting the drama build, letting the spectators’ breaths catch just in time. He climbed and climbed, reached the top of the cage, then went down one step. Later he will say that he was simply afraid to jump from the very top of the cage. He bared his chest to show a heart he had drawn for the occasion, but the drawing was erased by his sweat. He gave Man such a strange jump, more like a fall, and won the fight in a horribly gray anti-climax. Foley got the chance, at the right time and in the right place, to become the hero he always dreamed of being. And he failed.
Still, Foley’s controversial characters (yes, by this point he already had more than one) fit easily into the emerging era, that of the edgy product that appealed to teenagers. But while the really big stars, such as The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, represented the hedgies on the microphone, including allusions to various reproductive organs and sending the hands of the opponents’ mothers, Foley represented the hedgies inside the ring.
And when we say adgies in the ring at the end of the 90s, we are talking, among other things, about an unforgettable fight against Undertaker, also ironically with a cage, in which Foley managed to fall from the top of the cage towards the announcer’s table and through the cage and into the ring. For dessert, and if overly graphic descriptions aren’t your cup of tea it’s time to move on to the next paragraph, he broke a tooth that somehow came out through his nose. And I don’t know and I don’t want to know how this is even anatomically possible.
RT @WWEonAE: Thanks for watching tonight’s episode of WWE Rivals! We’ll be back next week with the story behind the rivalry between @TripleH and @RealMickFoley. Catch it next Sunday at 10/9c, only on @AETV. #WWEonAE pic.twitter.com/IdpqzL4kip
— Charlie Simpson (@simplycharles85) August 8, 2022
Bottom line, Foley was the secondary ragdoll, and frankly didn’t stand a chance against the superstars who passed him in the rotation. Surprisingly, the competitors had a chance against them. The ratings battles between WCW and WWF went to a draw. A period of dominance of one and a period of dominance of the other, at a certain point it has already moved to a successful week of one versus a successful week of the other. Vince McMahon, despite the success and profits, was unable to break even. So he thought outside the box. Maybe he doesn’t really need the perfect champion. Maybe we can give a chance to a champion a little less beautiful, a little less shapely and with a little less teeth.
On the “Raw” show of January 4, 1999, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson entered as the WWF Champion. Still not the rock of “The Scorpion King” and “Fast and Furious”, but still a very handsome 27-year-old bombshell of charisma who quickly became the biggest name in the industry. In short, everything Polly was not. In short, it was one of the extraordinary script decisions of the period. At the end of the evening Foley pinned the champion’s shoulders to the mat and held up the championship belt. The Cinderella story is complete, the underdog has come out on top against all odds. Only the episode wasn’t filmed on January 4th, 1999, which is actually what makes the story one of the most famous in wrestling history.
Raw aired on a delay of a few days, and the match itself was actually filmed back in December 1998. What wasn’t on delay was WCW’s rival show, Nitro. So the competitors knew in advance that Foley was going to win the championship. What’s more, the competitors knew how much of an underdog Foley was for the simple reason that he had been a marginal comic character for them only a few years earlier. Someone who will no longer receive an outstanding dean at the School of the Prophets predicted that McMahon’s decision to put the title on Foley would tip the scales.. but in favor of WCW. The unforgettable words of a WCW announcer Tony Shivani There were, and I quote: “Dear viewers, if you’re even considering switching channels to our competitors, don’t do it. We understand that Mick Foley, who once wrestled here in WCW as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world championship. (laughter) That’s applicable How many sit in the chairs.”
Unfortunately for Shivani and his employers, it did put some bums in the chairs. Over half a million to be exact. That’s the number of viewers who tuned in to see Foley win the championship. It was a defining moment that day, as those half a million helped the WWF achieve higher ratings than WCW. It was also a defining event in the history of the competition between the two organizations, since from that day on, WCW did not surpass WWF in the ratings. Two years later, she also went bankrupt. Not a bad feat for the mocking Cactus Jack.
And yet, even for Toothless Cinderella, the clock strikes midnight. A short time later, the belt was back on The Rock’s waist. Foley did wrestle a few more memorable matches, but never became the leading figure in the organization. He faded away as a wrestler, but flourished as a figure in American pop culture. He took advantage of his writing talent and published several bestsellers that reached the prestigious list of the New York Times, became a regular character on morning and talk shows, and in fact displayed an elegance and class not necessarily suited to a rough industry like the one that gave him his fame. Although he did not jump from the top of the cage like Jimmy Snuka, he did appear five times on Jimmy Kimmel. And his remaining ear is tilted.
In retrospect, there’s something very symbolic about Foley never getting his moment on the cage. He was afraid of it, fell from it and collapsed through it. But he never got the jumping hero moment. Because he’s just not that hero. He is the hero who doesn’t let anything stand in his way. that with the help of hard work and self-belief he reached places that no one had ever given him a chance to approach. In the movie “The Dark Knight” they talk about a hero who is not the hero we want, but the hero we need. So while we all want to admire superhuman, larger-than-life heroes. It’s more fun that way. But to be inspired by success stories that are all about patience and perseverance, we need the underdog hero. When the urge is to throw up our hands and lose faith in ourselves, we need to remember that there are also Mick Foley stories in life.
OH, IT’S ON!
Renewing my feud with @Undertaker at @c2e2 in Chicago!
I love these conventions. pic.twitter.com/NfbSblwwoa
— Mick Foley (@RealMickFoley) August 6, 2022