Recently, a few prominent wrestlers have been tied to a mail-order steroid scandal. Obviously, with you physique, questions are going to surface. So, let me ask you for the record – Mick Foley, are you on the juice?
(Laughs.) No, I've safely avoided that scandal. I guess I'm lucky. Mother Nature didn't deal me the best hand, but in an ironic twist, I may have gotten with WWE in 1996 after 11 years wrestling around the world because no one was ever going to accuse me of being on the juice.

I'm glad we got that cleared up – none of us wanted to put an asterisk next to the "Dude Love Era." One more question along the same lines, what goes through your mind when you hear about a Sports Illustrated article naming several professional wrestlers and accusing them of using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs?
I don't know if they're proven and I know that the allegations came before WWE's new wellness program, where guys are tested pretty regularly. I don't look down on anybody who tries to help themselves and I think the media can kind of pile on certain subjects to a degree that it just becomes unfair – like Mark McGuire was mugged because he dared to take Andro which is a GNC supplement. And, generally speaking, if you can get something at a General Nutrition Center, you're under the belief that it's good for you while you're buying it and taking it. So, I'm afraid if they start cracking down on all performance enhancing substances coffee drinkers better beware.

For those who may not be familiar, what was the idea behind The Hardcore Diaries and what did you hope to accomplish with this book?
I had agreed to write another book and didn't really know what I would be writing about. I only knew that I wanted to make it different than the books I had written in the past. I was really concerned because I knew I had a wrestling comeback to pitch to WWE, then to train for and prepare for mentally and physically. And then I thought, "Hey, that sounds like a good idea for a book. I'll just chronicle the events as they're unfolding." I thought at the time I pitched the idea that it would be the greatest six weeks of my life and it turned out to be the most frustrating. But, from a writer's standpoint, it was actually far more interesting to write about a creative disaster than a creative gem.

That is one of the things that sticks out about the book – at the beginning, you are very excited about this idea and by the end, you almost sound defeated. Obviously, you had no idea what was going to happen when you wrote the book, so what was it like to write it and then to look back once it was done?
It was very frustrating and I wondered in print several times if it would even be published because it did so often question WWE's decisions and creative direction. I guess I was fortunate that Vince McMahon really believed in my right to tell the story as I saw fit. But certainly I never envisioned the story not having a very happy ending. At the end, I measure it all out and I realize it may not have been as bad as I thought, but I certainly wouldn't have done it over, that's for sure.

Once you finished writing it, what was the reaction when you turned in the book to the people at the WWE? Was there a lot of resistance to it?
I guess there was a lot of concern. (Laughs.) None of the other books had been critical at all and here's this one that was in a sense a flattering portrait of Mr. McMahon, but it was also a far more honest portrait than most of the guys had painted. Generally when it comes to Vince, the guys' take is simply "I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for him, he's a creative genius." And, to tell you the truth, I think Vince gets sick of what he will readily call ass kissing. I think he found my viewpoint to be refreshing, although at this point I think he's had about as much of me as he's willing to stomach. But, until the moment I saw the commercials airing, I had kind of accepted that the book might not get publicized.

A lot of this book centers around your relationship with Vince McMahon. Like you said, Vince was supportive of the book and allowed it to be published, but what was Vince's reaction to the book and how do you see your relationship with him now? Do you think writing the book changed your relationship with him?
I don't think my relationship changed because I think it soured about a year and a half ago.

When you almost signed with TNA?
Yeah. I don't know, we'd had several verbal run-ins over what my role in the company would be and I talk a little bit about how I was dying to get out of my contract early and the fact that they made things like publishing a novel that had nothing to do with wrestling difficult for me to write outside of their realm. I think when I left in 2001, it was out of necessity, because had I not left when I did, I would have probably been bitter and angry with WWE. As it is now, I love the company, I like and respect Mr. McMahon, but I can't claim to be a real friend of his, which I thought I was back in the late 90s.

Another interesting point you touch upon is the dual nature of Vince McMahon - on the one hand, he is the genius who made the WWE the most dominant wrestling brand and destroyed all of his competition in the 90s, but on the other hand, he's the same guy who devoted a segment to pulling things out of Jim Ross' ass following JR's colon surgery. How do you see Vince McMahon?
There's a genuinely good side to Vince and I have seen that enough to know it's real. But I imagine nobody gets to be a billionaire by being a nice guy all the time. And I think where Vince and I differ creatively is that he thinks anything that entertains the fans is fair game. He crosses the line that I would hold WWE up to.

If you were to take over as president and owner of a wrestling company, how would you run your company?
Well, I certainly wouldn't be as successful as Vince is and I wouldn't even pretend I would know what I was doing. I have enough trouble balancing my personal checkbook without being at the helm of a billion-dollar company. But, if I had a little say in the creative direction, I would maybe be more open to ideas that other wrestlers have and I would really try to get them to do a lot of thinking for themselves, so that the characters have a more of a legitimate flavor to them.

How often do wrestlers actually pitch ideas and how often are those ideas actually integrated into show?
I thought that the WWE has been very open to my ideas, but when I go back and look at my actual batting average, it's not that good. Most of what I pitch is eventually shot down. The idea I detail in the book was the first time I was given the chance to explain the idea in front of the entire creative team. And I thought that would be great because there would be no creative game of telephone where the message would be heard from the maximum number of people. I still maintain that if it had been done the way I pitched it, it would have been a much more successful idea.

The book culminates with your match at the ECW Pay-Per-View One Night Stand, which was a huge financial success for the company. That pay-per-view helped paved the way for a new ECW, which hasn't been received quite as enthusiastically by the fans. What is your opinion of the new ECW and why do you think fans haven't responded to it as favorably as the two One Night Stand pay-per-views and The Rise and Fall of ECW DVD?
I guess you could compare the first One Night Stands to a Yankees "Old Timers Game," in that people went out of their way to see the beloved attractions of their youth. But you certainly couldn't have Old Timers Day every day. It would get old in a hurry. Not that these shows themselves weren't great because they use a good eclectic blend of wrestlers who represented different styles. But I think that if they had just relied on guys who were the old ECW that essentially we'd be giving the fans nothing but a nostalgia show and doing it with guys who were now older and less formidable.

So I like the idea of using the old stalwarts, the proven WWE stars and the new characters. I just think that they kind of stumbled along the way. But I'm not writing them off yet. I like some of the characters and I'll say it here because I said it once before and apparently the girl in question was kind of flattered – I kind of like that vampire Ariel girl in a weird type of non-plutonic way.

So, it's actually a non-plutonic way that you like her? That's good, since in your book you talk about your feelings for Melina being innocent, like a child on Christmas morning.
She's the anti-Melina – the plutonic friendship and the non-plutonic friendship.