WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley recently spoke on his podcast, “Foley is Pod,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including Seth Rollins and how some initially thought that his character was silly:
“I remember there were people thinking it was the most embarrassing thing in wrestling, you know, this Seth Rollins thing, and I was like, he’s onto something and he’s sinking his teeth into it and it was just so much fun to see him evolve and just take to it. It reminds me of Edge at the peak of Edge’s character prowess where he just bit into everything he did with gusto. I did a little article about Edge when he retired, we all thought for good, and I said, ‘He embraced the ridiculous.’ It didn’t matter how silly it was, he was going to make the very most out of it.”
“In the beginning, the new Seth Rollins seemed to be a little silly and he just kept going with it, believing in it, to where now the crowd obviously, and I don’t watch wrestling nearly as much as I used to, but I watch it enough to know that this guy is at a point where it’s the perfect marriage of in-ring talent and in-character. So a really great belt for him, and I think it’s important that the title not go to Cody because I think what Cody is going through in this series with Brock Lesnar is giving him the credentials so that when he does, and I think there will definitely be a moment where he becomes that guy, everyone will feel like he deserves it.”
Possibly ending his live shows in 2025:
“I’ll be gearing up for I think one final tour in 2025 to celebrate my 40th year in the business. I’m just looking forward to telling some unique stories, maybe some things I never even wrote about, was shy about saying, and I look forward to having a great time.”
The Hardcore Championship belt:
“I don’t know if I traveled with it or not because it was enough of a hassle to have the Winged Eagle belt where, you know, this is what it was like every day we travel, ‘Joey we got a problem here.’ I’m like, ‘It’s not a band saw.’ ‘We got a band saw’, because of the way the Winged Eagle, and then they would open it up. They’d see it was a title belt. They say, ‘Try it on.’ We take photos. But these jagged shards of metal, I think that belt could be considered a weapon, so I believe they transported it from town to town. I believe that was the case. I could be wrong.”
Turning heel in 2006:
“I was really nervous about it. I remember after I worked with Ric (Flair), I wasn’t happy with the payoff. I called up Vince and I said something about, ‘Vince, I think this heel run’, and he stopped me and said, ‘What heel run?’ I go, ‘Alright, maybe not everyone took to me being a heel, but I think it was effective’, and then he bumped me up considerably for the SummerSlam match with Ric. I don’t know about considerably, but somewhat.”
“Shawn Michaels had really shone a light to me on the possibility of the short term heel turn, because he had turned heel on Hogan, and by the time the angle was over, everyone forgot he was the heel to begin with. So I did feel like the goodwill I had accrued over those many years was going to come back and it did in the same way that a lot of people don’t even want to acknowledge in their head that Steve Austin was a heel. Not that they want to, it’s just their brains don’t take them there when they think of Steve and if you point out how funny he was with the Kurt Angle stuff, people remember that, but it’s almost like that’s not the Steve Austin we wanted to see even though they enjoyed it while it was happening. So in their mind, they remember the Steve Austin that was. I thought going in, these people are going to be pretty quick to forgive, and they were.”
You can listen to the complete podcast via AdFreeShows.com.
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
