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wrestler, born Michael Foley, on June 7, 1965, in
Bloomington, Indiana. The Foley family moved to Setauket on
Long Island when Mick was still a young boy. In high school,
he became a dedicated fan of professional wrestling and its
incredible antics. He even made a home video of himself
performing various stunts in the outlandish persona of
“Dude Love.” Foley caught the attention of trainer
Dominic DeNucci and began training with him in 1983.
Since he made his professional debut in
1986, Foley’s apparent worship of physical pain has
allowed him to fulfill his lifelong dream and become one of
the most popular wrestlers in the World Wrestling Federation
(WWF). The six foot two, nearly 300 pound Foley has three
alter egos—Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind—and has
participated in several of the notoriously sensational
WWF’s more extreme spectacles. In 1999, Foley fought a
brutal match with a separated shoulder; that same year he
was body slammed fifteen feet from the top of a cage onto a
bed of thumbtacks. Incidents like these have contributed to
the negative image of pro-wrestling as needlessly violent
and ultimately dangerous to the competitors—an image
tragically reinforced by the death in May 1999 of the
WWF’s Owen Hart in a fall from the rafters of a Kansas
City arena.
Foley starred in the 1999 documentary film
Beyond the Mat, about the world of professional
wrestling. In December 1999, his newly-released
autobiography, Have a Nice Day!, reached the top of
the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. He
and his wife Collette have two children, Dewey and Noelle.
He retired from pro-wrestling in 1999
after losing a "career match" to Triple H. He
currently serves as the commisioner of WWF and is still very
popular with the fans.
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