Mick Foley On Being Upset When His Wife Wasn’t Allowed Backstage Early In WWE Career
Mick Foley does all he can to provide for his family while he was a pro wrestler and he recently spoke about a time when he was angered by something WWE management did.
In 1996, WWE signed Mick Foley and immediately put him into a feud with The Undertaker. The interesting thing about it is that even though most wrestling fans knew Foley from WCW and ECW as Cactus Jack, WWE chose to put a brown mask on his face and name him Mankind instead.
Over the years, Foley became other characters like Dude Love and he went back to being Cactus Jack as well while also wrestling using his real name Mick Foley as well. Foley went on to be one of the most beloved wrestlers ever that is a three-time WWE Champion that was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
By the time he started in WWE in 1996, Foley was already married to his wife Colette for several years and they had two young children at the time named Dewey and Noelle. They added two more sons in later years for a total of four children.
During a recent episode of the Foley is Pod podcast, Foley was talking about Survivor Series 1996 when he faced The Undertaker again in a match won by the Deadman. Foley would recall bringing his family to a show where his young kids were crying and his wife wasn’t comfortable backstage after. Foley also spoke about an incident when he brought his wife and two young children to shows, which led to them having to hang out in a bathroom with open sewage.
“Now I’m bringing them to New EnglandI can’t remember if they were in Portland with me; but they were definitely there the next night in Bangor. The agent — and I don’t need to name the agent — may have been overplaying his hand by not allowing my family backstage. And ushered them into a bathroom with what appeared to be an open sewage line. And why I didn’t stand up right then and say “this doesn’t fly,” I don’t know. I was probably thinking, “I’ve only got a few months in this company, I’m getting a push, I don’t want to rock the boat.”
The story continued with Foley talking about bringing his wife to Survivor Series 1996 and how he had to leave her all alone due to a backstage edict in WWE at the time.
“Working my fourth Pay-Per-View with the Undertaker. There’s an edict ‘no wives backstage.’ So my wife is celebrating her birthday. We take a trip together to New York to celebrate. She’s by herself. She’s going to be going to the show by herself. The edict comes down, ‘no wives.’ I appealed — even asked Jim Ross. I was told that was the rule. So now my wife’s on her own, all day.”
Foley would go on to say when he got to the show, he saw other wives, girlfriends and even “companions” in the backstage area.
“And when I get to the show, I’m at the building at one. To me, there’s no reason why my wife can’t be there until six, and then find her seat. But that’s not the case. So if the edict is being followed by everyone, that’s one thing. But if you show up, and you see other wives? Girlfriends? A companion who’d, uh, known the wrestler for 24 hours or less? That’s a problem.”
As he continued, Mick Foley admitted that he was angry about it at the time.
“And now I see it, right or wrong, as a pattern. And I’m pissed. You can say, ‘you’re a professional, you have to put that to the side.’ I’m more sensitive than most, I think that’s safe to say. And when you get that knot in your stomach? It’s a pretty good gauge that something’s wrong.”