Mick Foley - Saint Mick: My Journey from Hardcore Legend to Santas Jolly Elf

Table of Contents

To Mickey and Hughie - for keeping the magic alive

To Elaine, who has allowed her Village to be our playground

It was a magical night in December of 2016, when a few, very sick children had a special visit from Santa Claus. He stood six foot four inches tall, virtually filling their door frame. He had a hearty laugh and twinkling blue eyes that shined through gold rimmed spectacles and crinkled under the pressure of his rounded cheeks and upturned mouth, blanketed in a snow white beard. He was clad head to toe in red cloth with white trim held together by a giant black belt and black boots, and he bellowed, Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas! Only he wasnt St. Nick, he was St. Mick.

St. Mick told the children stories about the elves at Santas workshop and the challenges of working with reindeer. He not only knew the childrens names, but seemed to know something special about each one of them. He smiled at the parents who were beaming with joy and he left each child with a little bit of the magic of Christmas. But what they left him with was so much more

It was as if St. Mick, also known as WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley or his alter egos the deranged Mankind, who wore a tattered button down shirt and leather mask, the Hardcore Legend Cactus Jack in his red flannel shirt with his two-by-four wrapped in barbed wire, and the tie-die hippie Dude Love, had finally figured out who he truly wasor at least, what he was meant to do.

We were backstage at WWEs flagship show, where we were portraying the Commissioner and General Manager of Monday Night RAW respectively (or the ever hokey McMahon-Foley Connection as we liked to call it) when Mick told me about his epiphany. We had just finished shooting a scene on the TV Office set and the rest of the crew had left. Mick wasnt exactly in the bowels of the building where his old Mankind character preferred to dwell, but he was sitting in the dark to the side of the bright production lights in a chair that seemed too small for his hulking frame. Since Micks return to television in July of 2016, when we werent going over our dialogue, we were usually talking about Christmas. (Ive honestly never known anyone to love Christmas as much as Mick Foley. At first I found his obsession a bit odd, but as time went on, I actually looked forward to our merry discussions.) We spoke about the unusual color his beard had become after being dyed white, back to brown, and then back to white again. He shared the stories he had planned on telling the kids about the trouble with reindeer and the special gold coins he had made at Santas workshop. We even spoke about this book and whether or not he should keep it for family and friends or publish it for the world, but that night his tone was softer and more deliberate than usual. He was talking about his most recent visit to Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh.

In those hospital rooms, I really felt like the stories I had been working on came to life. I wondered if all of the things during the course of my career maybe put me in the perfect position. All of those years of portraying different characters, the microphone time, even doing my one man shows, plus the years of visiting injured service members and children in our local hospital... has seemingly given me the perfect experience to make the biggest possible difference.

Ive known Mick Foley for over twenty years. Our paths have crossed in many different ways, and through it all, he has never changed. He is an incredibly complex individual to say the least: brilliant, savvy, and nave all at the same time. And if you forced my hand I might even say a little bit strange. He is also one of the most talented people I have ever met. And when he asked me to write the foreword to this book, I was both honored and surprised. After all, I like Christmas, but not nearly as much as Mick.

Thank you Mick for having the courage to share your passion for being Santa Claus and why the spirit of Christmas can mean to so much to those who need it most.

Your friend,

Steph

S o does the world really need a fifth Mick Foley memoir? Well, based on the sales figures from my fourth memoir, the answer seemed to be a resounding no. Perhaps there was a reason Winston Churchill stopped at three. But this is no ordinary memoir; its a Christmas memoir! In other words, Im taking the people most likely to care about any more of my autobiographical experiences, and chasing them away! Wrestling fans have long known of my fascination with Christmas and my seeming obsession with a certain jolly old elf. But that knowledge has seemingly not resulted in any type of measurable enthusiasm. Even my most ardent fans seem to accept my year round passion for Christmasand especially my Santa thingwith bemusement, maybe even mild amusement, but certainly not with the type of excitement that would bode well for a deeper study into the origins of my Yuletide yearnings, my psychological pondering as to their existence, and the evolution of my existence as a red suit ambassador.

Why exactly would someone who was once 4 for 4 on the bestseller ball fieldincluding two #1 New York Times bestsellers (the grand-slam home run of publishing aplomb) put himself in a position to extend his subsequent bestseller slump to 1 for the next 7, especially with an entry as unlikely as this one? Players break slumps by looking for quality pitches to hit, like a fastball right down the pipe. But Saint Mick is essentially a slider low and away. The chances of making quality contact are really low and the chances of looking foolish in the process are remarkably high. So why even step up to the plate again under such dire sales circumstances?

Well, quite simply, at the risk of sounding all artsy, this is a book that felt like it had to be written. Night after night, I could feel it calling out to me: write me...write me! Write me even if no one will read me! Write me for your children, so that you might document the amazing journey you shared with them. Write me for yourself, so that you might get some sleep instead of laying awake night after night, jotting down note after note, beating yourself up, wondering about the wisdom of writing a book with no discernible audience in mind. But most of all, write me for the best reason possibleso that years from now you wont have to look in the mirror and stare day after day at the man you know full well should have written me.