Mick Foley Recalls Being Afraid To Wrestle Kurt Angle In TNA

On a recent episode of “Foley Is Pod,” WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley recalled winning the TNA World Championship, being scared to wrestle Kurt Angle, working with Vince Russo, and his creative process in the Anthem-owned promotion.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On being scared to wrestle Kurt Angle due to his physical health: “Because of the cardio aspect. I was having a lot of trouble for more than one or two minutes, and I was really gasping for air. I don’t want to overdo the back injury, but the back injury I had in 2006, it was really terrible. It’s really serious, and anytime I pushed too hard, especially with weights — Now, what I didn’t know is that over the course of time, I had something known as acquired scoliosis. That was what accounted for the loss of almost three inches of height. When I saw this when I went for my WWE physical, and I saw how badly curved my spine was, I said to the doctor, ‘Would that account for those inches of height?’ And he goes, ‘yeah, absolutely.’ So, when I got home, I was so down I knew that my hips and knees were going to pay a price. I didn’t know my spine would be curved. So, your body does whatever it needs to do to keep your eyes straight. In this case, it meant, over time, curving my spine because if I’d been leaning a certain way and my eyes weren’t adjusted, then you’re looking at the world through crooked eyes.

“So, what this means as far as training goes, especially if you’re working like on a leg press machine and your spine is crooked, you’re putting more pressure on one of the pads than the other, and when you’re exerting, and I was exerting especially when I was doing the Al Snow 100 rep training where you know you can power through, but it’s just a matter of will because your quads start having some trouble at 40 or 50, but it’s light enough that you know you can get to 100 if you have the willpower. When I got off of that machine — it felt like somebody had opened up part of my buttocks and was pouring a tea kettle of hot water. It was one of the most painful ridiculously painful things I’ve ever been through.”

On if he was excited to work with Vince Russo again: “Yeah, I was. I really liked working with Vince, but Vince and I differed because he didn’t think the wrestling was as important as I did. I thought it was important that we give people good wrestling, and I think Vince saw wrestling kind of as the pretext to do angles, which it is, in a way.”

On what his creative process in TNA was: “It was a lot of free-styling. For better or worse, sometimes you could tell we were joking around or having too much fun, but I liked it. I really enjoyed it. Loved the camaraderie with JB, and I like the storyline where I am kind of squeezing into Jeff’s domain. — We didn’t do subtlety well in TNA, but I thought that was pretty subtle when I moved into his office, and then the next week, Jeff’s photos are down, and there’s that ludicrous caricature of me and JB as the tweak and tweet connection. I thought it was moving in a good direction so that, ultimately, Jeff and I would have faced off had he not run into the Angle/Jarrett situation. But that’s where we were heading, and I thought it was good.”

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