Mick Foley is one of the best ring performers in the past thirty years. I say that because I've been watching wrestling for the past thirty years (admittedly, starting at the ripe old age of four). As Cactus Jack, Mankind, and Dude Love, he created three of the most memorable wrestling personas I can think of.
When Mick first debuted in 1991 on World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as Cactus Jack, I was legitimately terrified of the man. His matches were full of brutality, acrobatics unexpected of a man his size, and enough overacting you believed the man had a screw loose. The actual Mick Foley is pretty much the opposite of eccentric characters. He's a dorky quirky guy who has a near-endless amount of funny stories to share about his fellow wrestlers. Have a Nice Day is the first of three autobiographies he's written and the largest at about seven hundred and fifty pages. It chronicles Mick's life from his Bloomington, Indiana childhood to his first retirement in 2000.
Due to the fact said retirement didn't "stick" and he was wrestling with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as late as 2014, this autobiography is by no means complete but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining as hell. It is a crime Have a Nice Day isn't available in Kindle format and I encourage my readers go to Amazon.com (here) and say they want to see it released as such. The heart of the book is Mick's easy-going narrative, which is seemingly one amusing anecdote after another. The book opens up with a horrific story about how Mick lost his ear in a match with fellow wrestler Big Van Vader, only to make the story darkly hilarious as he ended up having to explain to a German nurse how he got injured doing a "fake sport."
The book is littered with stories both funny as well as moving as we watch Mick Foley move from obscurity to becoming the sort of man who might win the World Championship Belt. Wrestling is scripted but it is a massive competition both behind the scenes and on the mat to distinguish yourself enough to win a push to the spotlight. Listening to the stories Mick has to share about both the WCW, ECW, and WWE's backstage politics will give you a new respect for anyone who manages to make it big. Wrestlers have to work their asses off in order to make any money in the business and frequently injure themselves in order to do the sort of crowd-pleasing moves necessary to make themselves famous.
There's moments of tenderness, too, like Mick Foley's tribute to Owen Hart and talk about his relationship with Brian Pillman (both men dying tragically at a very young age). We also get a moving account of his romance as well as sustained relationship with Colette Foley, a woman who is, in Mick's own words, far too good for him. Mick isn't a professional writer but this doesn't hurt him in the slightest as it goes well with his informal conversational tone. At the end of the book, I feel like I'd come to know the oddball professional wrestler and would likely have called him friend if we'd ever shared a workspace.
One of my favorite stories from the volume was Mick sharing how he first got inspired to enter professional wrestling by watching "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka climb to the top of a steel cage and jump down onto his opponent. It's a story with a funny twist at the end because he'd snuck away from college to go see the match against his parent's wishes, only for them to see him sitting in the third row on television (due to his very recognizable trademark flannel shirts). Another tale which I loved was Mick trying to deal with Vince McMahon's good-natured attempts to help his career by giving him truly horrendous gimmicks like "Mason the Mutilator" amongst other dumb stage names.
The book also contrasted and compared the benefits of wrestling in the WWE, the WCW, Japan, ECW, and the independent circuit. Mick Foley has worked in all four promotions and gone back to them after serving in others so we get his initial perspective as well as some after the fact. Mick talks about the fans of each promotion too and what they reacted to. I especially loved how he decided his "gimmick" for the ECW would be to be a guy who loved the WCW and hated hardcore wrestling. That's adorable. Less adorable being the description of how many injuries Mick Foley has sustained in pursuit of his craft.
Through Mick Foley, I got to know such individuals as Terry Funk, Diamond Dallas Page, Steve Austin, and Vince McMahon. We also get Mick Foley's opinion on some famous moments of wrestling history such as the folding of WCW and the infamous Montreal Screwjob. The truly impressive thing about this book is that I think non-wrestling fans would enjoy this book almost as much as wrestling ones.
And that's amazing.
10/10