On this week’s edition of “Foley Is Pod,” Mick Foley discussed the “Making of Mankind,” including talking about the idea behind the Mandible Claw, how he came up with pulling hair out of his head, Vince McMahon wanting to call him Mason the Mutilator, and why Mankind had a separate entrance and exit theme.
Foley talking about the idea of using the Mandible Claw:
“By using the mandible claw, now I’ve got a hold that I can use on anyone at any time that doesn’t cause me pain. I didn’t create it. I brought it back at the suggestion of Jim Cornette in 1992,” Foley said.
On how he came up with the idea of pulling hair out of his head:
“I think it wasn’t until I actually made the debut that I shaved the divots out of my hair and decided Mankind was going to pull his hair,” he revealed.
“I’d been around people with emotional difficulties. Even back when I was a lifeguard, one of the children had big tufts of hair missing because she was a hair puller. Obviously, that’s a lot of pain. If someone who takes to pulling their own hair out, they are suffering emotionally on a big level. I thought, ‘Yea, that’s who my guy is.'”
“So he would express frustration when he didn’t get a pinfall by pulling out his hair. First of all, we taped or glued some clips of hair to the mask. That didn’t work. It didn’t look realistic. I had long hair at the time and it wasn’t particularly well treated, so there were a lot of dry ends. I found if I just pulled rapidly, instead of yanking from the skull, if I pulled the hair itself, that after six or seven of these, it was visible, and then it would float. It was this great thing where the floating is gentle like a butterfly in nature, but it’s being done by a madman who just pulled out his own hair. So even as the hair was floating through the air, I was now back on the offense.”
His reaction to Vince McMahon wanting to initially calling him Mason the Mutilator:
“Vince said, ‘In this business, we’ve had crushers, we’ve had destroyers, we’ve had executioner’s, but we’ve never had a mutilator.’ He gets that bass in his voice, ‘Mutilator, that’s what you are.’ Then he gives me the name Mason.”
“He alludes to the Manson name but tells me that we can’t go there, and I don’t want to go there. I was very uncomfortable with being Cactus Jack Manson. I did it because I really had no other choice. I felt Mason the Mutilator is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. It sounds to me like something that would be in a bootleg version of an old Fish card game. It just sounds awful.”
“He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I like it a lot, but what if.’ Those were the three biggest words. ‘But what if instead of being Mason the Mutilator, I was Mankind the Mutilator?’ He says, ‘I don’t think I understand it.’ I said, ‘This way when they’re talking about the future of mankind and the destruction of mankind, it means two different things. You know, it’s talking about me and the people’, and he’s writing all this stuff down on a yellow legal pad.”
On why Mankind had separate entrance and exit music:
“I did like the idea that after he caused this carnage that he could be calmed down by the sound of beautiful music and he’s at peace.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit “Foley Is Pod” with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
