12 Wrestlers Who DESTROYED Their Bodies For The Business
2. Mick Foley
There's no way lovable wrestling dad Mick Foley is pain free, let's be real about that straight off the bat.
Mick, whether he was hitting elbow drops onto concrete as Cactus Jack or taking timeless bumps as Mankind, put his body through absolute hell. Some, like old WCW chief Eric Bischoff, thought he was going too far. Others, like Vince McMahon, agreed but knew Foley was a license to print money as part of the 'Attitude Era' machine. Mick himself has to take the bulk of the responsibility for some nightmares he put his young kids through.
Check out the still-relevant 'Beyond The Mat' for more on that. All of those unprotected steel chair shots to the head The Rock gave Mankind still reverberate, but they're even more distressing now the world has a better idea of the damage they do to the human brain. Christ knows how many undiagnosed concussions guys like Foley suffered during their in-ring careers, man.
Mick did it all willingly. He loved entertaining people, and he enjoyed the thought of shocking them by doing what few others would be crazy enough to do. WWF chiefs backstage were shocked and terrified when he said he wanted to come off the top of the Hell In A Cell structure in 1998, and Foley has never been a stranger to biting barbed wire, scorching fire or any number of other things that have nothing to do with the humble headlock.
He's been called a "glorified stuntman" by some and "God" by others. One thing's for damn sure: Mick brutalised his body for wrestling drama.