Mick Foley was born in Indiana in 1965 but his family relocated to New York. During his teenage years, Foley gained an interest in wrestling after see "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka jump off the of a Steel Cage in Madison Square Garden. From then on, he wanted to be an wrestler. He trained in Pennsylvania, driving hours from his college in New York to become a wrestler and performed many independent organizations including UWF and World Class Championship Wrestling. He started with WCW in 1991 as Cactus Jack and within a year, challeneged the World Heavyeight Champion Sting for the title in Falls Count Anywhere match. He came up short but called the match the best he ever worked.

Foley's time in WCW was marred by injury and regretful storylines such as the "Lost in Cleveland" storyline with Vader. He won his only title in WCW, the Tag Team titles, in 1994 with Kevin Sullivan going as far to cancel a surgery to reattach part of his ear he lost months earlier. During this time, WCW and ECW were co-promoting  together and Foley appeared on ECW TV where he spat and threw down a WCW title. Foley left WCW and went to work with ECW full-time winning the ECW Tag Team Championships with Mikey Whipwreck on two occasions. He also wrestled in Smokey Mountain Wrestling and Japan during this two year run but signed with the WWE to become Mankind. His last match in ECW was with Whipwreck.

He started as Mankind in 1996 and immediately started a feud with The Undertaker where he beat Taker on several occasions and even took Paul Bearer away from The Undertaker. He earned two shots at the WWE Championsip (one against Shawn Michaels and the other against The Undertaker) but came up short in both shots. Foley would bring the Cactus Jack character and introduced a new character named Dude Love, who turned heel to challenge Steve Austin for the WWE Championship but lost that match also. In addition, he won the WWE World Tag Team titles with Terry Funk at Wrestlemania 14.

His most famous incident happened at the 1998 King of the Ring when he faced The Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match. Foley climbed to the top of the cell and was thrown off of it and through the announce table. After getting back on top of the cage, he was thrown through the cell down to the ring where a chair that was in the ring, slammed against Foley's head and knocked out a tooth of Foley's. Many people say this match jump started Foley's career. In late 1998, Foley won the WWE Championship by defeating the "Corporate Champion" The Rock.  Foley and The Rock would exchange the belts two more times before The Rock ended the feud in a Ladder match. The two joined forces after this to become the "Rock N' Sock Connection" and won the tag team titles three times.

He won the WWE Title one more time at Summerslam 1999 against Triple H and Steve Austin but lost it the next night to Triple H. This feud developed into a Hell in a Cell match that stipulated in Foley he would retire from wrestling, which he did lose. He returned a few months later at Wrestlemania 2000 in Fatal Four Way match for the WWE Championship but did not win. He did not wrestle for another four years and became storyline Comissioner of the WWE in 2000 and left the company so after only to return two years later. He would feued with Randy Orton and Edge during his return to the company eventually becoming the color commentator on Smackdown until his contract with the WWE expired in September 2008.

After leaving the WWE, he moved onto TNA Wrestling and became "executive shareholder" of the company. He went onto defeat Sting at Lockdown 2009 to win the TNA Heavyweight Championship. He lost the title to Kurt Angle in a King of the Mountain match and lost the subsequent rematch when Kurt forced him to submit. He won the TNA Legends title from Kevin Nash but Nash won it right back soon therefter. After a program with Abyss, Foley turned his attention to the arrival of Hulk Hogan to TNA and was assulted by Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sean Waltman on the first Impact of 2010 after going after Eric Bischoff.