Mick Foley shared the heartbreaking news on Monday that his mother has passed away.
“GOODBYE MOM,” the wrestling legend wrote in a tribute posted on his official Facebook account. “It is with a heavy heart I report the passing of my mother, following a lengthy battle with dementia.
“She was a strong, fiercely independent woman who beat polio as a child, became the first member of her family to attend college, and instilled in me a belief that I was capable of doing anything.”
Thanks in part to commentator Jim Ross, Mick has often been referred to as “Mrs. Foley’s baby boy,” a monicker that helped seal his underdog appeal with fans on his way to defeating The Rock for the WWE Championship in January, 1999.
The WWE Hall of Famer’s tribute described his mother’s hard upbringing in the “shadow of the Great Depression” after her birth on a farm in a small New York town. He credits her learning from a young age that “a dollar had to be stretched as far as it could possibly go” as being the foundation for “the legendary Foley thriftiness.”
“My brother and I thought we had it made, though. We had close friends in the neighborhood, our own neighborhood wiffleball team (the Parsonage Yankees) and a delicious, home-cooked meal on the table every night,” Foley wrote. “While there is not a drop of Italian blood in the Foley ancestry, I have never tasted spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna that could touch my mom‘s. Her Yorkshire pudding (a Christmas Day tradition) was the Bret Hart of Yorkshire puddings; the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be!”
The Hardcore Legend said that he only learned a couple of years ago that his mother had polio as a child.
“I may have done some impressive things in my career, but my mother stomped a mud hole in polio’s @ss and walked it dry, and grew into a strong, independent woman who became the first member of her family to attend college,” he said.
He then detailed her getting a college education despite her father’s resistance against a woman having a college education. Foley wrote: “But my mother persevered, got that college education she valued so greatly – graduating near the top of her class.”
After college, Foley’s mother became a physical education teacher in Long Island, where she met his father. Her relationship with her own father “remained distant” up until his death of dementia in the early 1990s.
Foley credited his mother’s love of knowledge and reading for helping him become a bestselling author, beginning with his 1999 memoir, Have a Nice Day! In his Facebook post, Foley said that he realized years later that when he was writing the book, “I was not doing it all on my own; my mother’s love was guiding me – all those years of encouragement allowing me to believe I had the necessary tools to write my very own book.”
He added, “Following the book’s release, my mother carried it with her everywhere…I do believe her proudest moment as my mother was seeing my name on the cover of a book I had written. There’s no way I could have done it without her.”
Foley then described how his mother became intertwined with his main career.
“My mother first entered the pro-wrestling lexicon in April, 1997, after a sitdown interview with Jim Ross where I talked about my reaction to my first experience in the bizarre subculture of Japanese ‘Death Match’ wrestling by saying, ‘Mrs. Foley’s Baby Boy is finally home!’” he wrote, adding, “Had JR not taken an interest in that phrase, the mention probably would have been one and done. Instead, Jim really sank his teeth into the moniker, and through his words, my mom became part of my character.”
Foley wrapped up his tribute by including details of the difficulty of seeing a loved one suffer with dementia while celebrating the special moments that still occur. He wrote of saying his final goodbye to his mother with his children and praying for the day when dementia can be cured.
“Until that day, I encourage all of you to appreciate the little things, tell your loved ones they are loved, and never take a single precious moment for granted,” he wrote.
He ended his post with this message: “Goodbye Mom. I love you very much and will always be proud to be Mrs. Foley’s Baby Boy.”
Our thoughts are with Mick Foley and his family.
