Mick Foley on Life Beyond the Mat

N E W  Y O R K,  June 5 -- Three-time World Wrestling Federation champ Mick Foley is flying high.

No, he's not hurling himself off the top of a 20-foot cage.

Hot on the heels of his 1999 best-selling autobiography, Have a Nice Day, the 300-pound wrestling legend is back with a second volume of memoirs, and the crowd seems to approve: Foley Is Good hit bookstores in late May and it's already No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list.

Pleasure and Pain

Foley — better known to fans as "Mankind" — made his pro wrestling debut in 1986 and quickly earned a reputation for enduring pain. For years, he toured the world, hammering his body in brutal encounters that included thumbtacks, barbed wire and beds of nails.

But violence in the ring took a tremendous toll on Foley's body. He's sustained a legion of injuries including eight concussions, five incidents of broken ribs, a broken cheekbone, second-degree burns and a torn abdominal.

In 1994, Foley lost two-thirds of his right ear while performing one of his signature moves called the "hangman" in Germany.

"I'd done it a lot of times and always managed to get free," he recalls. "In this case the ropes, which were elevator cables covered in rubber, were just too tight, so when I squeezed my head out, it more or less pushed my ear off my head."

In the end, were the fans and the fame worth the physical damage?

"Yeah, definitely," says Foley. "I'm pretty sure I'll suffer to some degree for the rest of my life, but I don't think that's any different from any football or basketball player."

Backyard Wrestling

In his book, Foley takes on critics who blame the WWF for the recent rise in backyard wrestling leagues and wrestling-related injuries among kids.

"If we are supposed to be blamed for the backyard injuries, then maybe we ought to start blaming Mia Hamm for the proliferation of women's knee injuries," he says. "It's not fair in either case."

It's really up to parents, says Foley, to establish guidelines and educate their kids about wrestling moves that could damage the spinal cord or lead to other serious injuries.