Three faces of Foley (1996–1998)[edit]
In 1996, at the persistence of
Jim Ross, whom Foley had known in his days in WCW, WWF head
Vince McMahon brought on Foley, and he signed a contract with WWF and this time, the WWF did not use Foley as "
enhancement talent". McMahon was not a fan of Cactus Jack and wanted to cover up Foley's face, so he was shown several designs for a new heel character- a man with a leather mask and chains, called
Mason the Mutilator. However, WWF decided that it was too dark and only left the mask, and although interested in the concept of the character, Foley did not like the name, so he came up with the name
Mankind, which company head
Vince McMahon liked and approved.
[36] Foley arrived in the WWF in 1996 debuting a
gimmick that was perhaps his most famous personality: Mankind was a mentally deranged schizophrenic who constantly squealed (even throughout his matches), shrieked
"Mommy!", spoke to a rat named George, enjoyed pain, physically abused himself (such as by pulling out his hair) and wore a mask; Mankind's finishing move was the
Mandible Claw nerve hold, which involved sticking his ring and middle fingers in his opponent's mouth. His catchphrase was "Have a nice day!" and he lived in
boiler rooms; hence, his specialty match, the
Boiler Room Brawl.
[7] This specific match was a chaotic, dangerous and sometimes violent match that took place inside an arena's mechanical/boiler room, with all sorts of exposed metal piping with large bolts, concrete flooring and solid electrical equipment everywhere, and it was a no disqualification and no countout match, so foreign objects were allowed, and the match's objective was to escape the boiler room first.
[37]
On the April 1, 1996, episode of
Monday Night Raw in
San Bernardino, California, the day after
WrestleMania XII, Mankind debuted on TV and defeated
Bob “Spark Plug” Holly, quickly moving into a feud with
The Undertaker. The creatively inclined and dedicated Foley initially would prepare for playing Mankind by researching the character, often spending the night in the respective arena's boiler room and sometimes under the wrestling ring for the first few months, but after that he could get into character almost instantly. The two then began interfering in the other's matches until they were booked in the first-ever Boiler Room Brawl, and in addition to escaping the arena's boiler room, the combatant also had to reach the ring and take the urn from Paul Bearer. After 30 minutes of brawling in the boiler room, the backstage corridors and the entrance ramp, and both men taking some bumps involving metal trash cans, tables, ladders, metal poles, hot coffee and the exposed concrete floor, The Undertaker appeared to have won, but Paul Bearer refused to hand him the urn, allowing Mankind to win, thus (for the time being) ending the relationship between Paul and The Undertaker. While Mankind was managed by Paul Bearer, he referred to him as "Uncle Paul". Mankind then became the number one contender to face the then WWF Champion
Shawn Michaels at
In Your House: Mind Games. Michaels won by disqualification via interference by
Vader and The Undertaker.
The Mankind and Undertaker rivalry continued with the first-ever
Buried Alive match at
In Your House: Buried Alive. Undertaker won the match, but Paul Bearer, the
Executioner, Mankind and other heels attacked The Undertaker and buried him alive. Afterward, The Undertaker challenged Mankind to a match at
Survivor Series, which the Undertaker won. The feud continued after another match at
In Your House: Revenge of the Taker for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, which Undertaker had won at
WrestleMania 13. Undertaker won the match and Bearer took a leave of absence, continuing the feud.
Jim Ross then began conducting a series of interviews with Mankind. During the interviews, Ross brought up the topic of Foley's home videos and the hippie-inspired character he played in them, Dude Love, as well as his tormented journey in wrestling. The interviews also affected the fans, who began cheering Mankind, turning him into a face.
Around this time,
Stone Cold Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels won the WWF Tag Team Championships from
Owen Hart and
The British Bulldog, but Michaels was injured and could no longer compete. Mankind tried to replace him, but Austin said he wanted "nothing to do with a freak" and resigned himself to facing Hart and the Bulldog alone the next week. Halfway into the match, however, Foley debuted a new persona known as Dude Love, who helped Austin take the victory, becoming the new Tag Team Champions.
[38] Austin and Foley vacated their tag team titles when Austin suffered a neck injury in a match at
SummerSlam in
East Rutherford, New Jersey. Dude Love feuded with
Hunter Hearst Helmsley, as the two competed in a
Falls Count Anywhere match. One of Foley's most memorable vignettes aired before the match began, in which Dude Love and Mankind discussed who should wrestle the upcoming match. Eventually, "they" decided that it should be Cactus Jack, and Foley's old character made his WWF debut. Cactus Jack won the match with a
piledriver through a table. Shortly thereafter, ECW's
Terry Funk joined the WWF as Chainsaw Charlie. At the
1998 Royal Rumble, Foley participated under all three personas, Cactus Jack (1st entry), Mankind (16th), and Dude Love (28th). Charlie and Jack defeated
the New Age Outlaws at
WrestleMania XIV in a
Dumpster match to win the tag team titles (which was originally supposed to be a barbed-wire rope match- but this very often violent and bloody match was scrapped due to the high profile appearance of
Mike Tyson taking part at the event). The next night, however,
Vince McMahon stripped them of the belts and scheduled a rematch in a steel cage, which the Outlaws won with help from their new allies,
D-Generation X. On April 6, 1998, Foley turned heel when Cactus Jack explained the fans would not see him anymore because they did not appreciate him and only cared about Stone Cold Steve Austin: after a hard-fought match with Terry Funk in Albany, fans started to leave the arena a minute or so before their match ended. Howard Finkel, the ring announcer there announced that Austin, who was the hottest wrestler in the WWE at the time would be making an appearance- and the crowd exploded at the news, and many rushed back to their seats. Foley later admitted that he was emotionally hurt by this crowd reaction, that his hard work could not compete with Austin's popularity and that he would be just another wrestler to face the company's megastar.
Vince McMahon explained to Austin the next week that he would face a "mystery" opponent at
Unforgiven. That opponent turned out to be Dude Love, who won the match by disqualification, meaning that Austin retained the title. McMahon, displeased with the outcome, required Foley to prove he deserved another shot at Austin's title with a number one contenders match against his former partner, Terry Funk. The match was both the WWF's first-ever "
Hardcore match" and the first time that Foley wrestled under his name. Foley won, and after the match, a proud McMahon came out to Dude Love's music and presented Foley with the Dude Love costume. At
Over the Edge, Dude Love took on Austin for the title. McMahon designated his subordinates
Gerald Brisco and
Pat Patterson as the timekeeper and ring announcer, and made himself the special referee. The Undertaker, however, came to ringside to ensure McMahon called the match fairly, and with his presence, Dude Love lost the match and was "fired" by McMahon on the June 1 episode of
Raw.
On that same episode of
Raw, Foley reverted to his Mankind character, who began wearing an untucked shirt with a loose necktie and resumed his feud with The Undertaker. At
King of the Ring in Pittsburgh’s
Civic Arena on June 28, the two performed in the
third Hell in a Cell match, which became one of most notable matches in professional wrestling history. Foley received numerous injuries and took two dangerous and highly influential
bumps- the first being tossed off the top of the 16 foot high Cell by The Undertaker, crashing through the wooden Spanish announcer's table and landing on the arena's concrete floor. Barely five minutes after the first bump Foley, with a separated shoulder climbed back up to the top of the Cell after Terry Funk and others tried to stop him, and the second bump, which was an unplanned botch- The Undertaker Chokeslammed Foley, and the fenced panel Foley landed on broke and gave way, so Foley fell 13 feet and landed on the ring mat. Mankind lost the match to conclude their storyline.
WWF Champion (1998–1999)[edit]
Main article:
The Rock 'n' Sock Connection
Although conventional wisdom holds that the Hell in a Cell match was responsible for Foley's rise to main event status, live television crowds did not initially get behind Mankind because of the match.[
citation needed] Following a couple of months of teaming with
Kane who together won the WWF Tag Team Championship on two separate occasions and various feuds with Kane, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker, Foley decided that crowds might respond better if Mankind were more of a comedy character, and so he abandoned the tortured soul characteristics and became more of a goofy, broken down oaf. He began the transition into this character following
SummerSlam in 1998 after Kane turned on him and the two lost the tag team championships.
The following month, Foley began an angle with Vince McMahon, with Mankind trying to be a friend to the hated Mr. McMahon. On the October 5 episode of
Raw, while McMahon was in a hospital nursing wounds suffered at the hands of The Undertaker and Kane, Mankind arrived with a female clown called Yurple in an attempt to cheer him up. Having succeeded only in irritating McMahon, Mankind then took a sock off his foot to create a sock puppet named
"Mr. Socko". Intended to be a one-time joke and suggested by
Al Snow, Socko became an overnight sensation. Mankind began putting the sock on his hand before applying his finisher, the
Mandible Claw, stuffing a smelly sock in the mouths of opposing wrestlers. The sweat sock became massively popular with the fans, mainly because it was marketed (mostly by
Jerry "The King" Lawler during the events) as being a dirty, smelly, sweaty, repulsive, and vile sock. McMahon manipulated Mankind, who saw the WWF owner as a father figure, into doing his bidding. McMahon created the
Hardcore Championship and awarded it to Mankind, making him the first-ever champion of the hardcore division. Mankind was then pushed as the favorite to win the
WWF Championship at
Survivor Series, as McMahon appeared to be manipulating the tournament so that Mankind would win. He and
The Rock both reached the finals, where McMahon turned on Mankind. As The Rock placed Mankind in the
Sharpshooter, McMahon ordered the timekeeper to ring the bell even though Mankind did not submit, a reference to the
Montreal Screwjob from the year before. As a result of Survivor Series, Mankind officially turned face, while The Rock turned heel and became the crown jewel in McMahon's new
Corporation faction.
After weeks of trying to get his hands on McMahon's new faction, the
Corporation, Mankind received a title shot against
The Rock at
Rock Bottom: In Your House. Mankind won the match by using his mandible claw hold (with the 'Mr. Socko' prop on his hand) and the referee declared The Rock had become unresponsive. But McMahon overruled the title change because Mankind didn't keep his pre-match promise to make The Rock submit. After several weeks of going after the Corporation, Mankind defeated The Rock to win his first WWF Championship on December 29 in
Worcester, Massachusetts. The taped show was broadcast on January 4, 1999, so that is the date WWE recognizes as beginning the title run. Having title changes on broadcast television rather than pay-per-view was uncommon in professional wrestling, but because of the
Monday Night Wars, TV ratings became more important. The head of rival promotion WCW
Eric Bischoff, attempting to take advantage of the fact that their show
Monday Nitro aired live while Mankind's title victory was taped the week before, had announcer
Tony Schiavone reveal the ending of the Mankind-Rock match before it aired. He then added sarcastically, "That'll put a lot of butts in the seats." The move backfired for WCW, as
Nielsen ratings showed that Raw won the ratings battle that night, despite the
Hulk Hogan vs. Kevin Nash main event which led to the reformation of the
New World Order. Foley said that the ratings indicate that large numbers of viewers switched from
Nitro to
Raw to see him win the title and took great personal pride from this- and WCW never beat the WWF in the TV ratings ever again.
Mankind lost the WWF Championship to The Rock in an
"I Quit" match at
Royal Rumble at the
Arrowhead Pond in
Anaheim, California near
Los Angeles, in what is regarded as one of the company's most brutal matches. During the match, Foley took several violent and dangerous bumps from
The Rock all over the arena, including repeated steel chair shots to the head and a fall from the stands onto solid electrical objects, which sparked upon impact. Although steel chair shots to the head were commonplace in the Attitude Era, the most a wrestler would take in a single ten-minute match was two, or sometimes three, with their hands in front of their head to ease the blow and lessen a chance of a concussion- but Foley had taken
eleven in the span of two and a half minutes- all unprotected because he had been handcuffed just before The Rock began his repeated onslaught. Foley was originally supposed to take five chair shots to the head with the final match-ending shot being two-thirds up the entrance ramp, but after the fifth shot, Foley was still at ringside, and even after Foley signaled to The Rock to hit him in the back, The Rock decided to keep to the match's brutal tone based on Foley's previous calling of similar shots on the spot, and he hit Foley six more times in the head until they got to the two-thirds mark. This match is featured in Barry Blaustein's documentary
Beyond the Mat, which shows the impact the match had on Foley, his family and even the rest of the audience at ringside, and at one point Foley's five-year-old daughter Noelle cried and screamed in horror, believing her father was dying as The Rock pummeled Foley with repeated chair shots. The match got to a point that people sitting in the front of the audience screamed and signalled at the referee and The Rock to stop the match.
[39] The match ended after Mankind lost consciousness, and The Rock's allies played a recording of Mankind saying "I Quit" from an earlier interview he did with Shane McMahon.
Mankind won the title back in a rematch on Halftime Heat, which aired during halftime of
Super Bowl XXXIII, in the WWF's first-ever
Empty Arena match in
Tucson, Arizona on January 31. After 20 minutes of brawling in the ring, the empty grandstands, a kitchen, the arena's hallways, an office, and the catering hall, Mankind took a filthy sock off his foot and stuffed it into The Rock’s mouth and then used a
forklift to pin a subdued Rock in a basement loading area. The two then competed in a
Last Man Standing match at
St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which ended without a winner, meaning that Mankind retained the title. The next night, Mr. McMahon booked a ladder match for the championship, which The Rock won with help from
The Big Show. Mankind would go on to
WrestleMania to defeat The Big Show and again at
Backlash a month later in a violent and brutal Boiler Room Brawl (the first in the WWF since July 1996), where the objective of the match had been simplified from the 1996 match to just escape the boiler room. Shortly after Big Show would team with Mankind, Test and Shamrock to take on the Corporation at Over The Edge. Later in the year, Foley and The Rock patched up their friendship and teamed up to form a comedy team called
the Rock 'n' Sock Connection, becoming one of the most popular teams during that time. The pair won the tag team titles on three occasions. One notable match was a Buried Alive match that pitted the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection against The Undertaker and The Big Show, who were out for revenge after losing the tag titles one week earlier. This match included a spot where The Big Show tossed Mankind off the stage, landing hard on the dirt and falling into the grave- Mankind traveled nearly 25 feet in total. Foley then helped
Raw achieve its highest
ratings ever with a segment featuring himself (as Mankind) and The Rock. The "This Is Your Life" segment aired on September 27, 1999, and received an 8.4 rating, with Yurple the Clown making another appearance.
[40] Foley briefly reverted to his Cactus Jack persona for a Hardcore handicap match against
Ministry of Darkness members
Viscera and
Mideon on May 10, 1999, which Cactus won; the match saw Cactus enter using two basketballs as weapons.
In August 1999, Foley returned after a three-month absence recovering from knee surgery to resume his feud with
Triple H, who had kayfabe injured Foley's left knee with his sledgehammer. On an episode of
Raw, Mankind drew with Triple H in a match for the number one contender for the WWF Championship, which resulted in a Triple Threat match between Steve Austin, Triple H and Mankind at
SummerSlam for the title. Foley won the WWF Championship for the third time at
SummerSlam, pinning the reigning champion Austin.
[41] Mankind's win led to an enraged Triple H to assault Austin, justifying Austin's absence while he healed a knee injury. The next night on
Raw, Triple H defeated Mankind to win his first WWF championship. A feud then developed between Mankind and the McMahon-Helmsley regime, led by Triple H. This included Triple H defeating Mankind in another Boiler Room Brawl on the September 23 edition of
Smackdown!, as part of a five-match “gauntlet“ challenge set upon Triple H by Vince McMahon. It was around this time that Foley began to realize he was going to have to retire soon- in addition to the massive physical toll he had inflicted on his body, Foley then began to develop cognitive problems such as forgetting simple bodily motions and trouble remembering how to write and spell basic words. Foley’s last match was supposed to be a tag team match with Al Snow in November 1999, but with WWE having to go on with the absence of their biggest star Stone Cold Steve Austin at the time (who was out with a broken neck), Foley felt that the company would suffer too badly if another one of its biggest stars disappeared from the roster- even with The Rock surging in popularity. So Foley, even in the poor condition he was in decided to go on for a few more months until Austin returned, and this is when he continued his feud with Triple H.
[42]
Mankind continued his feud with Triple H when he was supposed to have the last Boiler Room Brawl match with "
Santa Claus". He ended up being attacked by the
Mean Street Posse,
Billy Gunn and
Road Dogg- all dressed up as Santa Claus.
[43] Mankind defeated all 5 of these Santa Clauses until Triple H appeared as a 6th Santa Claus and brought down Mankind, escaping the Boiler Room and winning as "Santa Claus".
[43] On the December 27, 1999 episode of Raw, Mick Foley and the Rock had a "Pink Slip on a Pole match", where whoever was first to grab the
pink slip first stayed in WWF with the loser having to leave, in which Foley lost.
