WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley discussed his WWE return in 2012 after a stint in TNA on the latest “Foley Is Pod” episode.
After leaving TNA in 2011, Foley was asked if he thought he’d ever return to WWE in 2012.
“I thought I would come back for one or two matches a year. I had suffered from that string of concussions in TNA and that’s what led to the hard feelings that would lead me to saying to Terry Taylor, because they wanted me to take a little less money because I couldn’t fulfill the final two matches that were on my contract. I argue that I did about 15 extra matches that weren’t on the contract. But anyway, it was what it was. I had a meeting with Terry. I want to say I walked into his office because he was actually on the road. I said, ‘You know how you guys want me to take a little less?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you take it all?’ He looked at me and I just said, ‘I lost faith in this company a long time ago.’ In retrospect, I should have shut my mouth, walked out to the mailbox every two weeks, collected the check and been grateful to have it, but that’s not what I did. I still wish I’d done that.”
Regarding John Laurinaitis offering him to return to WWE:
“He said, ‘We were wondering if you would like to come back.’ He almost opened up a menu and said just select items to do whatever I wanted. ‘Do you want to host shows? Do you want to be a producer?’ I said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want to work that hands on with Vince.’ I knew I was going to be an ambassador as well.”
Foley said he went to get neurological work done on his spine after noticing he was 3 inches shorter than he used to be:
“He said, ‘We’ve been looking over your MRIs and your X-rays. You’ve got too many issues. You got muscular, neurological, skeletal, and even if we are able to help from a neurological standpoint, there’s nothing we can do with those other things.’ I’m looking at all these things I did during the course of my career and I mean, I’m paying a steeper price than I thought imaginable. I thought oh, yeah, of course my hips are going to be sore, my knees are going to be hurting, I’m going to be arthritic, but now I’m curved around like this, you know? I know saying tough times are relative. There’s other people who say, ‘I would trade lives with you. I’m getting up at 6am. I’m working two jobs to make ends meet.’ Nonetheless, this was pretty devastating for me and so I was going back to WWE in a really tough, dark place. It was a tough time for me. The concussions. Seeing the fallout. Seeing how much I lost in height.”
“The doctor said, ‘We got your MRIs back.’ This is before they even decided not to do the surgery. I said, ‘How is it?’ He goes, ‘It’s a bad MRI’, and I went, ‘How bad?’ and He proceeded to talk like five different discs, all things that I kind of knew, but it still stings when you actually see the proof. Now I find out it’s not just the discs, it’s the spine itself.”
He explained why he returned to WWE:
“There’s a whole bunch of things you can do beneath the radar in WWE. That’s why it seemed like a better fit, and the truth is, it’s home. It’s really home. I’m out and about a lot and I rarely get asked about my time in TNA. I’m a WWE guy and I’m good with that.”
Foley recalls his doctor telling him not to wrestle again:
“I met with Dr. Cantu. I came back two weeks later. He looks me in the eye and he says, ‘You should never wrestle again.’ I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘I can work an entire match around my left knee’, and I’m so proud of that. It’s almost like if I can’t have Here lies Mr. In Your House. No one came through bigger when it mattered less on my epitaph that I want, that I can work an entire match around my left knee because it showed me that doggone it, I was still one of the boys. Dr. Cantu looked at me and he said, ‘Mr. Foley, when we met two weeks ago, you struck me as a bright young man.’ It was his word, young. He said, ‘Since then, I’ve been reading about you. You have a lot going on for you.’ He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘If you want to get another neurologist to clear you, that’s your business, but I’m telling you, you should never wrestle again.’ What that did, it was essentially a matter of throwing in the towel. There was somebody taking the bat out of my hand and I felt this enormous sense of relief. I really did.”
“Literally a day, maybe two, after I talked to Dr. Cantu, it’s a day or two after the first meeting. I got a call from John Laurinaitis. He said, ‘There’s an issue with your impact test.’ So I did go back to that doctor as well, who also told me I should never wrestle again. So I’m thinking, that’s it. It’s not a knee. I walk around better than I used to because I had my hip replaced and my knee replaced. There’s no brain replacements. This is not something I wanted to toy around with.”
Why he would most likely say no if WWE asked him to return now:
“I can’t remember a written promo. That’s one of the reasons why if I do get a call for TV, I’m more likely to say no. In 2012, the year we are covering, I made a difference. I thought honestly, I was one of the few returning guys who could make a difference or who wanted to make a difference because that was my primary goal. If you’re gonna bring me back, I want to help out with the storyline. I don’t want to just get the pop. I don’t want to just promote something I have coming up. I want to make a difference. Now, I’m going to tell them I cannot remember a storyline, and I don’t want to just be a hanger on in the back for old school day. But as far as long term memory goes, I think it’s as strong as it’s ever been.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to Wrestling News the transcription)
