Mick Foley

Mick Foley is an American author and former professional wrestler who performed as Cactus Jack, Mankind, and Dude Love. His wrestling career included major American promotions and international appearances, and he became a three-time WWE champion. He also served as an on-screen commissioner in the company.

His first autobiography, Have a Nice Day!, was followed by further memoirs describing different periods of his working life. His published fiction includes Tietam Brown and the baseball-related novel Scooter. Foley has also written illustrated books, holiday stories, and comics. His WWE Superstars collaborations place wrestling personalities in invented settings rather than documenting actual matches or presenting additional autobiographies.

Wrestling Memoirs

Have a Nice Day!: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks: Foley recounts his upbringing and the professional wrestling career that produced the characters Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind. His account includes travel, violent matches, injuries, backstage relationships, and family life. The memoir describes the physical work and decisions behind performances that audiences saw in the ring, including events that caused lasting injuries, while tracing his progress toward prominence in major wrestling promotions.

Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling: Continuing after Have a Nice Day!, Foley describes further experiences within the World Wrestling Federation. The book examines backstage events, the controversy over backyard wrestling, and his I Quit match with The Rock. Personal recollections accompany discussions of the presentation and business of wrestling, including the difference between performances intended for television and the decisions and relationships surrounding their production.

The Hardcore Diaries: Foley records the development of a proposed WWE storyline, from its initial conception through negotiations and performance. Interviews, matches, creative decisions, and his relationship with Vince McMahon provide the working framework. Personal material includes travel, charitable activity, and encounters outside wrestling. The diary structure connects a specific comeback project with Foley’s broader reflections on his role in the company and his life away from it.

Countdown to Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal: Foley describes his physical and mental preparation for a major match at TNA’s Lockdown event. The journal also looks back on his departure from WWE and considers relationships and events within professional wrestling. Accounts of family life, charitable travel, and meetings outside the industry appear alongside the match preparations, placing the immediate sporting project within a wider period of change in his career.

Fiction

Tietam Brown: Seventeen-year-old Andy Brown moves in with his father after years in foster care and juvenile detention. He hopes to attend school and establish a more ordinary life, but his father’s behaviour creates further instability. A relationship with cheerleader Terri offers another possibility. The novel follows Andy’s attempts to manage family conflict, physical injuries, and the consequences of an upbringing marked by violence and neglect.

Scooter: Scooter Riley grows up near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx in 1969. His father is a New York City police officer, and his grandfather, a retired firefighter, explains life through baseball stories. As the neighbourhood changes after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Scooter confronts questions about courage, prejudice, and adulthood within his family and the city around him.

Illustrated Books

Tales from Wrescal Lane: Two illustrated stories imagine WWE personalities living on the same street as children. The Dudleys Do Right concerns sharing, while Kurt Koaster follows a young Mick Foley and Kurt Angle learning about bragging. Jill Thompson supplies the illustrations. The book adapts recognizable wrestling characters for stories about childhood behaviour rather than recounting the performers’ actual early lives or professional matches.

Cactus Jack and the Beanstalk: Bledtime Stories: This illustrated parody places Foley’s Cactus Jack wrestling character in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Produced as part of the Bledtime Stories line, it combines a fairy-tale framework with professional wrestling personalities. Its storybook and colouring-book presentation differs from Foley’s prose memoirs, using a fictional adaptation of a familiar tale rather than an account of his wrestling career.

Other Writing

Foley’s additional books include the holiday stories Mick Foley’s Christmas Chaos, Mick Foley’s Halloween Hijinx, and A Most Mizerable Christmas. Saint Mick recounts his involvement with portraying Santa Claus and the personal experiences connected with that role.