Mick Foley Says “Have a Jazzy Day!” - New York Comic Con 2023

In the echelons of hardcore wrestling, there is perhaps no name as recognizable as Mick Foley. Whether you know him as masked boiler room dweller Mankind, New Mexico outlaw Cactus Jack, the womanizing hippie Dude Love, or by his legal name, fans of wrestling need no introduction.

To those unfamiliar, Mick Foley is a legend of the industry, having wrestled professionally from 1987 to 2012. From grinding it out in the indies to rising to the heights of the sport, Foley has just about done it all.

His accolades are many, a three-time WWF World Champion, a TNA World Champion, and an 11-time world tag team champion under various promotions, including WCW and ECW as well.

In addition to his in ring career, he served briefly as WWE Commissioner, commentator, had a #1 New York Times Best-Selling book, Have a Nice Day, cameoed numerous times in pop culture, including a voice role as “The Boulder” in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and led a stand-up tour! Truly a man of many hats.

Foley, unbeknownst to me at the time, became the second Avatar voice actor featured in Jazzy Mag, after Michaela Jill Murphy a year back!

A lifelong fan and amateur wrestler, Foley was inspired by watching Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka to pursue a career of his own. Ever the entertainer, Foley sought the largest reactions possible to entertain the crowd. His many iconic bumps have become legend in the annals of wrestling.

Imagine my shock when I noticed the man, distinctive red flannel and red slacks, on my way into New York Comic Con! I jumped at the chance to speak with him for a moment, as no one around seemed to notice him. After a quick chat with the legend, he was kind enough to allow an interview!

The next day of the convention, I had dressed as my all-time favorite wrestler, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, a heel (wrestling lingo for villain) from the 1980s. Popular for his loud mouth, dirty fighting style, and quick wit, Piper had a segment between matches, “Piper’s Pit.” 

Here, he would make fun of other wrestlers, often challenging them to a match by segment’s end.

Snuka appeared on the most popular segments of “Piper’s Pit,” in which Roddy bashed Snuka in the head with a real coconut. Being our two favorites had this interaction, I wanted to hear his recollections of The Hot Rod on our own “Piper’s Pit.” No coconuts. 

On Roddy, he recalled:

“Well I was a fan, man. He was on Snuka, and I was a huge Snuka fan, so I remember taking my parents to see Snuka v.s. Piper at [Madison Square] Garden for their anniversary. That’s a good kid! And they were heel fans already, and Roddy Piper, ya know, he was cool. So he had some heel fans, but I was a diehard Snuka fan. But I realize how talented he was.”

Roddy and Snuka famously put on a fantastic match at Madison Square Garden later that year, in 1984. The match ended in a count-out victory for Roddy Piper.

Foley then shed some insight on Roddy’s method that I was unaware of.

“One of the things I didn’t know is that we all thought that Roddy was coming up with everything off the top of his head, which is an undeniable talent. I think it’s more impressive when you realize he actually spent hours with a notebook, writing down ideas. And so it goes back to the old adage, if something looks easy, it probably means that a lot of work had gone into making it look that way. So I think that was the case with Roddy.”

Hearing Roddy’s catch phrases were the result of hours of pen and paper practice was revelatory, even as a big fan! This includes some dialogue in the cult classic John Carpenter film They Live, in which Piper starred as protagonist John Nada, a drifter in Los Angeles.

John Carpenter, himself, was at the convention, celebrating 45 years of his horror classic and one of my favorites, Halloween. Mick got to catch up with Carpenter, and ask him a bit about Piper.

“I met John Carpenter today, the great John Carpenter, and talked to him a little about Roddy, but I did not mention the fact that he actually gave his notebook to John Carpenter. And the saying, ‘I just came here to kick ass and to chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubblegum.’ Yeah, it’s a classic line.”

Foley is known for his hard-hitting hardcore style of wrestling, which involves weapons, no count-outs, and a litany of injuries. Foley has lost teeth, his right ear, has been thrown off a 16-foot cage twice in a night, and impaled by barbed wire. To name just a few bumps. No human has bared more pain so consistently for so long on film and survived. Much less so functionally!

But has he ever experienced anything outside the ring that compares?

So the next question went:

“Now, you are one of the most well-known, most well-documented, with the exception of Jesus Christ, experiencers of pain in history. Now, what is the most amount of pain another human dealt to you that was not in a wrestling ring?”

“Not in a wrestling ring? And you’re not talking broken hearts either, are ya?”

“Oh, no no, physical we’re talking, not emotional.”

“Let me think about that… Most amount of pain? Huh…”

Jesus vs Mankind: Revenge of the Sin, 2023

Foley took a minute or two to think about this. I was happy to ask him something he likely had not answered. My interest grew as he took more time to reflect on his experiences.

“I think Tom Dawe accidentally kicked me in the privates once, that was quite a bit of pain, yeah. Hurt a lot.”

He then confirmed it was, in fact, an accident.

“Accidentally. Accidentally, the Dawes were a good family, they would never do that to anyone. That’s all I’m coming up with right now.”

He went on to joke, “I know that as a viewer, I watched a couple of Al Snow matches that were very painful!”

All those bumps later, and still quick with a zinger!

I had probably an hour’s worth of questions for Mick, from current industry direction, wrestling and life in Japan, career benchmarks, what Dude Love would say to Jerry Garcia, and much more.

However, I chose a wrestling news topic that had set the forums ablaze: the CM Punk - Jack Perry incident at All Elite Wrestling’s All In event in August of this year. According to Forbes, the Wembley Stadium show drew the largest ever live crowd for a wrestling show in the U.K., with 81,305 tickets sold and $10 million in gate revenue.

For those unfamiliar, the two had a dispute over a glass spot (a planned bump into, usually, fake glass). 

CM Punk, AEW’s top-drawing star, had warned Perry at an earlier match to use prop glass for his own well-being. However, at All In, after Perry had performed the spot with real glass before saying into the camera “Real glass! Go cry me a river!”

CM Punk, who was side stage, watching the monitors before his Real World Title victory over Samoa Joe, then confronted Perry. This escalated with Punk placing Perry in a front face lock.

Since the security video of the incident is yet to be made public, the lead-up to their brawl between these points is unconfirmed. While the video has not been released, Punk has been fired, “with cause,” according to AEW CEO, Tony Khan. 

Khan reported he “feared for his life,” as Punk allegedly lunged at Khan after he and Perry were broken up. Again, without the video, many online have speculated Khan may be lying on Punk, or at least exaggerating events.

I asked him about his overall take on the whole incident, as he is still quite in tune with wrestling’s current events. Mick Foley aside, CM Punk is my favorite living wrestler, so I had to get his perspective. On this, he explained:

“Well here’s the deal: if you sell 75,000 seats, and the you have the biggest, either the first or second biggest wrestling crowd in the history of the U.K., and people are talking about a fight, then a disservice has been done to the company. So that’s really a shame that a shadow was cast on such a great event. So, that’s how I think about it.” 

While Foley was kind enough not to cast aspersions toward any particular party, more and more fans seem to be turning on Tony Khan. Biggest U.K. crowd aside, the biggest news was an incident that could have been easily dealt with, press-free.

The show, for the record, was fantastic. CM Punk v.s. Samoa Joe, MJF v.s. Adam Cole, and many others on the card gave that British crowd a reason to stand up and go wild.

“But afterwards, the only thing people would talk about was the backstage stuff, so that was unfortunate,” he continued.

Before thanking him and heading off, I handed him the first issue of Jazzy Mag, with a note inside to “Have a Jazzy Day.” This was a play on his Mankind slogan, “Have a Nice Day.”

“That’s nice, ‘cause I have a flight home Sunday, so I will be doing a lot of reading!”

Grateful for the time I got to speak with him enough, he went the extra mile when he held up the Mag and announced, “Have a Jazzy Day!” 

Having the chance to interview a favorite and a legend was a surprise and an honor. Mick Foley, Mr. Mankind, thank you for lending your time to an up-and-coming publication! You are forever a part of Jazzy Nation.

Beyond grateful this Piper’s Pit didn’t end in a beating, too! Hope you enjoyed, and from Mick Foley and myself…

Have a Jazzy Day!