[1997-05-26-WWF-Raw] Interview: Mankind

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This time, Mick talks about hitchhiking to MSG to see Snuka vs Muraco in a cage. In a cool moment, they are able to spotlight him in the crowd. He explains the Dude Love persona. They show a clip from The Loved One and explain his training under Dominic Denucci and this is fascinating. This is absolutely awesome. They should still do these features today for their guys, but I guess it's kind of hard when their entire history is in developmental.

[Zenjo]

Like Edge at Wrestlemania VI, that night at MSG was a seminal moment in the life of a young Mick Foley. These segments are great.

[Kevin Ridge]

Mankind talks about the effect Snuka/Muraco had on him as he watched in person at MSG. He brings up the Dude Love character as a chick magnet. More backyard scenes of Mick and then him training with Denucci. Mankind doesn’t become the heart throb he planned on being. Awesome segment. Next week we go in to Cactus Jack.

[soup23]

This was very rare at the time but by now I feel like I have seen the Dude Love and Snuka cage stuff as much as him falling off the Hell in a Cell. I can still appreciate how this is produced especially showing the bald spot in foley's hair from him pulling it out and the story on Shawn.

[PeteF3]

Pre-Have a Nice Day, this was pretty much all new material at the time. Though I guess from now on, Mick's inspiration will be the Slaughter/Patterson alley fight or something. We get clips from The Loved One, and even some footage from DeNucci's gym of Mick mixing it up with Shane Douglas. Terrific interview, of course--I don't know if these segments rank up at the very top of Foley's promos, just because there's a lot of competition, but they certainly have a strong argument--maybe the biggest being that it actually tangibly affected his career to a much greater degree than any of his anti-hardcore promos did.

[Exposer]

This is excellent. Mick goes on about getting his testicle swollen playing Lacrosse in high school because he didn't want to wear pads. He then talks about his Dude Love persona & we get clips of his famous video. We also get the famous clip of him being spotted in the crowd at MSG the night of the famous Snuka-Muraco cage match. This is great stuff. One really gets a sense that this guy is deranged. The Mick Foley we know today is about to be born.