Mick Foley’s Dude Love character made it to WWE television because Shawn Michaels asked one simple backstage question—and Bruce Prichard happened to be listening.
While speaking with Inside The Ropes, Foley explained that he was working main event matches with Michaels while HBK was dealing with an injury. Michaels was still carrying a major part of WWE’s business at the time, so Foley took pride in protecting him and helping him get through the matches safely.
Foley said their matches may not have reached the level of Michaels’ greatest performances, but they were still strong, and he was taking good care of him in the ring. That working relationship eventually led Michaels to ask Foley whether he had always dreamed of portraying someone as dark and disturbed as Mankind.
“The way he found out, and the way this whole interview segment came up, was that I was having matches around the loop with Shawn Michaels when Shawn was injured. At that time, the champion had most of the weight in the company on their shoulders.”
“Now it’s more of a situation where the brand is the star. We’ve got big stars, but they’re not as important as the brand. It’s kind of like UFC, where UFC can have a main event you’ve never even heard of, but you still tune in because it’s UFC.”
“At this time, Shawn was carrying a lot of the weight of the company on his shoulders. He wasn’t in a situation where he could not wrestle, and he was healing while we were doing main event matches that may have been just a little bit underneath the Shawn Michaels classics, but they were still really good. I was taking really good care of him.”
During one of their conversations, Michaels asked Foley whether he had always pictured himself becoming a character like Mankind. Foley immediately laughed because Mankind was nothing like the wrestler he had imagined becoming when he first fell in love with the business.
“He said to me—and he didn’t mean anything by it—‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you always see yourself like this?’ Because this was the dark Mankind.”
“I’ve written 11 books if you include the four children’s books. No sentence ends well that begins with the words, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way.’”
“But he said, ‘Did you always see yourself like this?’ And I laughed and I said, ‘No, actually, I wanted to be you.’”
Foley then had to explain that he did not literally want to become Shawn Michaels. He wanted to play a character who had the same kind of appeal—the women loved him, and the men wanted to be like him. That character was Dude Love, a smooth-talking ladies’ man Foley created when he was only 18 years old.
“He looked at me kind of quizzically because we’d broken in almost the exact same year.”
“I said, ‘Not Shawn Michaels, but I had a character I wanted to be, and he was the same as you in that the women loved him and the men wanted to be like him.’”
“I told him about this character of Dude Love that I’d invented when I was 18 years old.”
Foley thought he was simply telling Michaels an old story. He had no idea that Bruce Prichard had overheard the conversation and immediately realized WWE could turn it into something. Prichard went straight to Vince McMahon and told him that Foley had a far more interesting history than WWE knew—and that footage of Dude Love already existed.
“I had no idea Bruce Prichard overheard the conversation.”
“He went to Vince and he said, ‘Vince, Mick Foley has a much more interesting backstory than you know, and he’s got video of it.’”
That was all McMahon needed to hear. Foley said that, despite Vince’s many faults, McMahon genuinely enjoyed making wrestlers’ childhood dreams come true. Once he learned that Dude Love was the character Foley had created as a teenager, he wanted to make it real on WWE television.
“Vince wanted to make that come true. For all his faults—and I’ve heard he’s got a couple faults—I love you, Vince.”
“He genuinely likes to see people’s dreams come true, and he genuinely loves his audience.”
“You’ll never see a photo of Vince with a fan where he’s not smiling, and he’ll always say, ‘Without them, none of this is possible.’”
“He really appreciated the fans, even though it did seem at times like he was deliberately trying to piss all of you off. But in the end, he loved the fans and loved to make dreams come true.”
Foley was living in the Florida Panhandle when McMahon called him early one morning with an offer that sounded almost too good to be true. Vince asked Foley how he would feel about becoming Dude Love. Foley assumed it would only last a few weeks, but McMahon initially told him the character would be his new identity moving forward.
“I got a phone call early in the morning when I lived in the Florida Panhandle.”
“He goes, ‘Hey, pal.’ I said, ‘How are you doing, Vince?’ because I was likely just waking up.”
“He goes, ‘How’d you like to be Dude Love?’”
“I said, ‘Like for a few weeks?’ And he said, ‘From now on.’”
Dude Love did not permanently replace Mankind, but the idea opened the door for Foley to rotate between Dude Love, Mankind and Cactus Jack. That gave Foley something no other WWE Superstar had done at the time—three completely different characters existing on television during the same run.
“That didn’t happen.”
“But what did happen was the three characters simultaneously, which no one had ever done.”
A random conversation with Shawn Michaels, overheard by Bruce Prichard, ended up reviving a character Foley created long before WWE ever came calling. Dude Love may have started as a teenage dream, but it became a real part of WWE history once Vince McMahon heard the story.
What did you think of Dude Love’s WWE run, and where would you rank the character compared to Mankind and Cactus Jack? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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