Speaking on the latest edition of his “Foley Is Pod,” WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley commented on his infamous “dumpster ride” with Terry Funk.
According to the “Hardcore Legend” himself, Vince McMahon originally wanted to take the dumpster bump.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his slow climb up the Tron to drop the elbow on Funk: “It’s not a bragging thing, but I will compare the x-rays of my pelvic girdle to anybody else’s, and mine will be among the worst you’ve ever seen because of my decision to drop those elbows off the ring apron. So something like climbing, even back then, was really difficult. But even that medical excuse (laughs) doesn’t cover for how slow and deliberate my climbing [up the Titantron] was. It was just awful.”
On how the stunt did not look devastating enough: “And then dropping the elbow into a dumpster that seemed to be filled to the brim with the packing peanuts. We could have relied on some cardboard boxes in there, you know? That’s a lot of packing peanuts in there, brother. What I should have done, what I should have insisted, was that instead of Terry and I staying down for the count? I think it would have been good if I came up with guns blazing, “bang bang,” and get taken out with a nice — not that I’d advocate a chair shot to the head now, but in keeping with them times — a chair shot to the head, or maybe boom-boom, nailing both me and Terry. Giving us reason to be selling something that otherwise did not look devastating enough to have us both down for the period of minutes.”
On talking Vince McMahon out of doing it himself: “Vince McMahon had to be talked out of taking the dumpster bump earlier in the day (laughing). He wanted to do it himself (laughing). I was like, Vince, you own and run this company. We don’t know what’s going to happen. What happens if you’re badly hurt? ‘Mick, I would never want any of you to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to.’ I pulled him over to the side, I was like, it’s my gimmick. You’ll kill my gimmick if you’re taking the same bumps.”
On how the bump didn’t match the story response: “I’m glad he didn’t. Plus, if we’d seen how bad it looked… it didn’t look bad-bad, but it didn’t look good enough to merit the attention it received, where the show was essentially shut down almost, and people were crying as if they’d seen the last of us. Sunny did a great job of conveying her concern. It just would have been better suited for something that looked more devastating.”
On knowing it wasn’t good when he wasn’t hurt:
“It’s still a dumpster, it’s still something that hasn’t been done before. We still don’t know how it’s going to turn out. There was like a rope for us to hold onto, so we wouldn’t just be thrown about inside of it. Our initial reaction was… that didn’t hurt enough to look good. I know that’s a terrible way of looking at it, but I was not a master illusionist. Usually if something looked like it hurt, it’s because it did. It didn’t hurt enough to look good, and I think the visual evidence.”(h/t – 411 Wrestling)