WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley recently spoke on his podcast, “Foley is Pod,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including inducting Stacy Keibler into the WWE Hall of Fame:
“I know we kind of teased that somebody had asked me and I said we will reveal it as soon as WWE reveals it, but they never revealed it. I was completely fine with being a surprise. I mean, I wasn’t lying when I talked about how happy I was and how I had a perpetual smile on my face because I always thought the world of Stacy. I had lost touch with her for quite a few years. I hadn’t actually seen her since the day after Christmas 2005.”
Foley also recalled his own induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013:
“There was a little bit of a controversy in 2013 that almost derailed or at least greatly affected my attitude in what I was going to say. What brought me back from that brink was remembering when I was in Impact. I got a (203) text message. It’s WWE asking if I would mind if they promote my book, which was an Impact Wrestling book, on their show. You want to promote my book on your show? They said, ‘Yea, Mr. McMahon thinks it’s the right thing to do.’”
“So at that time, for one year, we had this beautiful condo in Florida and they actually had like a movie room, so we reserved it for that night. I sat there with my family, and the moment I heard Michael Cole say, ‘Hey, our good friend, Mick Foley has a new book out’, and they really put it over. I made a little promise to myself. I don’t think I said it out loud, but a promise is still a promise. The promise was, if I’m ever asked to be in the WWE Hall of Fame, I’m going to say absolutely yes with no conditions placed on it. I’m not going to say I need to go last. I’m not going to say I need X amount of time.”
“Then I found myself feeling left out. USA I guess made the decision, or at least I’d heard they made the decision that they were going to edit the show. In order to show Donald Trump’s speech, they ixnay the Foley speech, and I let it get to me. It really hurt my feelings to the point where I remember calling up my wife and saying. ‘I don’t want anyone from my family coming to the Hall of Fame. I don’t want it to be important enough to bother me.’ Then I would visualize my speech just being, ‘Hey, thank you’ and throwing my ring out to the crowd and walking away with the worst Hall of Fame speech ever. Then I remembered that promise I made to myself. I’d gone on Twitter, I think and kabetched, I guess probably be a good term, a kind term for it. But I remembered that promise and that changed things for me.”
“I went into Mr. McMahon’s office and Hunter was in there, Stephanie was in there, and Kevin Dunn, and I just said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, It’s a great honor to be in here. I’m going to enjoy every moment of it.’ Kevin said, ‘Mick, why didn’t you just come to us’ and that’s what I should have done instead of complaining and taking my case to social media.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
