Mick Foley never felt pressure during his run as WWE Champion.
"The Hardcore Legend" sounded off on his Foley Is Pod program about Shawn Michaels' run during the 1990s era of WWE, as well as how he never felt pressure as a champion during his own run in the company.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On Shawn Michaels’ run during the 1990s WWE era: "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 and 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."
On how he never felt pressure as a champion: “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.”
Check out the complete episode of the Foley Is Pod podcast featuring Mick Foley by visiting Patreon.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
