"It just sounds awful"- Mick Foley discloses scrapped name for iconic persona
WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley recently revealed a scrapped name for his iconic Attitude Era persona Mankind.
Among the three faces of Foley, Mankind was used in WWE during the Attitude Era. While portraying the gimmick, with Mr. Socko by his side, the legend gave fans some of the most iconic moments in professional wrestling.
However, Foley's WWE career could've turned out very differently, given what the creative team initially wanted to call the character. On a recent edition of his Foley is Pod podcast, the Hardcore Legend spoke about when Vince McMahon gave him the gimmick, originally dubbing it 'Mason The Mutilator.'
"Vince said, ‘In this business, we’ve had crushers, we’ve had destroyers, we’ve had executioners, but we’ve never had a mutilator'... Then he gives me the name Mason. 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,” Foley recalled. (H/T - WrestlingNewsCo)
"Maybe there was another character inside of me besides Cactus Jack."
Despite some initial apprehension, @RealMickFoley was determined to make Mankind his own.
#FoleyIsPod: THE MAKING OF MANKIND is available for early access on AdFreeShows.com https://t.co/zxkXS54a3Y
How did Mick Foley turn Mason into Mankind?
Foley, obviously unhappy with the name Mason The Mutilator, suggested something different to Vince McMahon.
While Mr. McMahon initially didn't understand Mankind, he jolted down Foley's reasons for the name.
“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,” Mick Foley revealed on the podcast.
Thankfully, Vince approved the idea, and the gimmick would go on to bring career defining to Mick Foley. Mankind's most iconic moments range from his brutal chair-shots from The Rock, the infamous Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker, and three WWE Championship victories.
It is interesting to learn how such an iconic gimmick in WWE history got its name. You can read more about Mankind by clicking here.