While speaking on his eponymous “Foley Is Pod” podcast, the Hardcore Legend Mick Foley discussed his championship runs in WWE.
Foley said that he didn’t feel the same amount of pressure due to his status as a “transitional champion.” He also recalled Shawn Michaels’ work as champ during the 1990s.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Feeling pressure as champ: “There was a lot of pressure on the champion, pressure that I didn’t feel because I was a transitional champion. I’ll argue that I was the greatest — I was the Bret Hart of transitional champions, right? The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. But I never had to carry the company on my back, whereas Shawn was. There’s a lot of mental fatigue that goes into that, and if you were the champion, you were out there representing the company at appearances, early morning radio, those types of things. So when we knew we were going to work together, he was really open to outside-the-box ideas.”
Talking about Michaels’ run in the mid-90s: “As an in-ring performer, [Shawn Michaels] was just exceptional, just incredible, and if anything, only went on to lay claim for what I say is ‘the best wrestler of his generation,’ which I define by monthly pay-per-views. Clearly, we were in that generation with the monthly pay-per-views. I never had a cross word with him in all my time with him. I understood that he could be a problem, other people had said that, but I had not experienced that. I think it’s a credit to him that he was so open to ideas, he actually welcomed them. Because at the time, the champion was still kind of carrying the company.”
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