Mick Foley Stops Making Sense
LONG ISLAND, NY — Mick Foley has stopped making sense, friends and family said this morning in a formal statement released to the public. According to those close to the situation, all the years of hard bumps and chairshots to the head have finally begun to take their toll.
“I have to watch him at all times,” cried Foley’s wife, Colette. “Yesterday he cracked 2 eggs and put them in the toaster…” she exclaimed before breaking down in more tears. “Then he made a sandwich, but instead of peanut butter and jelly, he used toothpaste and ground coffee. Thank God I was there to stop him.”
“It’s just so sad,” she continued. “Everything he says (sniffs), it just doesn’t make sense. It has gotten almost impossible to communicate with him. All the kids and I can do is just flash dopey grins and laugh, pretending to understand him.”
Foley, who wrestled under the ring names of Cactus Jack, Mankind, and Dude Love, has largely remained inactive since he last appeared with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in a feud that many say put current WWE star Randy Orton on the map as a serious main event attraction. Since his wrestling debut in the late 1980s, Foley was known for taking overly violent bumps that didn’t protect his body. Memory lapses occurred as recently as 1999, and have slowly degenerated since that time.
Foley’s mother, whom Foley used to refer to in interviews with the line, “Mrs. Foley’s little boy is coming home,” echoed Colette’s sentiments. Teary-eyed, she told of rather embarrassing stories that are normally reserved for 90-year-old Alzheimer’s patients. “He often goes missing. Just the other day, we found him in the dishwasher. Luckily, none of us turned it on, or else who knows what would’ve happened. Still, he was locked in there, and he could’ve starved to death. Later that night, he threw himself in the clothes dryer and demanded that Dewey tumble-dry him. We were crying when we found him, and he was just laughing, pulling his hair out in clumps.”
Dewey, Foley’s son, has also noticed the condition. “Last night, Daddy read me a story. But when I looked at the words, they weren’t matching the things he was saying. I told Mommy, and she started crying. I don’t understand.” At that point, said Dewey, Foley “Stripped buck naked and started singing Knick Knack Paddy Whack. I ran out of the room crying, and he chased me all around the house.”
Foley’s housekeeper, Loretta Lopez, told scary stories of Foley’s recent actions. “When the phone rings, he picks up the iron and says, ‘Hello, Dude Love speaking.’ And when he wants to make a call, he picks up a banana and starts dialing. Then he’ll look in the mirror and pretend to talk to someone. The few times I have seen him use the telephone, I picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone. He had forgotten to dial, yet he was still talking. It’s very sad.”
Residents of Foley’s Long Island, NY neighborhood reported witnessing strange incidents as well, even those who do not know the family. “He jumps off the roof,” said Mr. Steinberg, Foley’s next door neighbor. “That’s normal for him. But now he’s doing it at 3 o’clock in the morning, and with no soft landing. He just jumps, yells ‘Geronimo!’ and lands full-force on the concrete. I know it hurts him, but he just lays there and rolls around, laughing. It wakes up the whole block.”
Miguel Fernandez, Foley’s former gardener, told CBS News that he noticed it about 4 weeks ago. “He said Hello like usual. But then, while I was mowing the lawn, he started asking me to paint his kitchen countertop and to throw his couch into the swimming pool. First of all, I’m not a painter or a pool guy; I’m a gardener. Second of all, the stuff he asked me to just didn’t make any sense. I refused, and he started doing a Vince McMahon impression and said ‘You’re fired!’”
WWE head writer Brain Gewirtz, one of Foley’s close friends, said he saw signs last summer that something might be wrong. “I asked him to cut a promo and say ‘bang bang.’ And he did, except he brought with him two actual loaded pistols. When he said the line, he fired two live shots. Scared the Hell out of us. Had it not been for his bad aim, I might not be here today. Security took him down right away, and Foley just started laughing and saying ‘bang bang’ over and over again, repeatedly.”
Al Snow, also a close friend of Foley’s, remembers that promo. “I wasn’t there to see it happen, but I drove back to the hotel with him. And he was still saying ‘bang bang’ ad nauseum, over and over and over again. Literally, he kept saying it while he slept. I tried talking to him, and he ignored me. Bang bang, bang bang, bang, that’s all he’d say. It took him a full 4 days to stop saying it.”
When reached for comment, Foley spoke to us, but appeared to be incoherent. On the record, he stated that the “Rumors about me are total keyboard. Phone jacks, picture frames, AM/FM radios, they’re all the same. I’m a clipboard for one reason, and one reason only, to take out the trash and punch the remote control. And Baba Booey to y’all.” He then performed a moonsault off the diving board into an empty swimming pool.
Upon hearing what Foley had told us, Colette once again broke down and mumbled, “See what I mean?”
Foley, who appeared in the documentary Beyond the Mat, has taken hundreds of brutal chairshots to the head throughout his storied career. Last year, he was also the subject of controversy over remarks made about him in Ric Flair’s auto-biography, To Be the Man.
Flair, who has since buried the hatchet with Foley, hopes the reports of Foley’s mental instability won’t prevent them from working a program together in WWE later this year. “We kissed and made up,” said Flair. “Everything’s fine now. But our encounter was still a little strange. After we shook hands, he wouldn’t let go and said, ‘One two three four, I declare a thumb war.’” Flair then showed reporters his broken hand as proof of the impromptu thumb-wrestling match.
Immediately after the report was released that Foley had stopped making sense, he was contacted by Jeff Jarrett about a possible position on the NWA TNA booking committee.
