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That's like watching a Japanese death match with no storytelling, right?
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It just It just Just violence, yeah. sake of violence, yeah.
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Hey, what's going on, everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today we're joined by Mick Foley.
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He's a WWE Hall of Famer, a writer who's made multiple appearances on the New York Times best-seller list, and you can keep up with him these days on the Foley's Pod Podcast and YouTube channel.
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But today, the hardcore legend takes on a battle royale against the wings of death.
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Mick Foley, welcome to the show.
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Thank you very much, Sean.
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Uh this comes highly recommended by my children. Really? Yeah, yeah.
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Well And as long as I mentioned the children, can I say I'm going the vegan option for them?
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Me, right along with you.
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Before we get started though, how are you around hot sauce?
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Do you get all nervous going into this? A little bit.
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Because the man I think I am may not turn out to be the man I am.
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I have to take out my cell teeth. Oh, there we go.
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These are the teeth that were knocked out in the cell match.
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I know you've had The Undertaker on here. Yep.
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All right, so I'm going to try this one first, right? Here we go. Okay.
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So you're just saying it's going to get progressively hotter from here?
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Yeah, this is base camp over here. Okay, I'm doomed.
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OKAY, LET'S UH ALL RIGHT.
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SO I'M ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF a wrestler's career.
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In your case, commuting 400 miles to train with Dominic DeNucci, living on a diet of peanut butter and bread, sleeping in the back of your Ford Fairmont.
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When you think about the small towns that you performed in from Poca, West Virginia to Freedom, Pennsylvania, is there a match that stands out in your brain as being just as compelling, just as good as anything you ever did on a pay-per-view?
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Oh, on those little ones?
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Well, the nice thing about those shows was that every match was your most important match.
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Uh ironically, when I got to WWE, there was this feeling of looking out and saying, "Wow, there's 18,000 people out here tonight. You know what?
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There's going to be another 18,000 tomorrow."
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So, although I was not known as a guy who held anything back, I was holding a little something back each night.
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Whereas, like in Poca, there were 26 people there.
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I remember going all out, just having this incredible feeling of satisfaction.
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It didn't matter that I was spending more on gas than I was making.
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What mattered is that we were working towards a towards a dream. This is okay.
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This wouldn't be my choice.
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It's pretty good, but not Just okay for you? Mhm. Yeah.
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What's the Foley risk-reward analysis?
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It's the instantaneous Foley risk-reward ratio analysis. Mhm.
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That was I think it was a god-given gift that would tell me You just You want a case in point? Yeah, yeah. I'd love one. All right.
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So, uh January 2000, just a few blocks away at Madison Square Garden. Uh I remember Mr.
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McMahon saying to me and Triple H, you know, "No somersaults." And then as soon as Mr.
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McMahon walked away, Triple H looked at me and goes, "You You put him under the ring already?"
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I says, "Yeah, I got it taken care of."
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This is one of the last matches of my career.
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And so, it was a big moment.
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And I just saw that majestic, you know, pile.
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There was 5, 6,000 tacks.
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And I thought about the wisdom of taking the pedigree face first in those thumb tacks.
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And I came to the conclusion that, okay, I could lose an eye.
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But imagine the This looks more my style. Okay, I'm skeptical. Yeah.
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Matches the shirt a little bit, Mick.
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The Hawaiian's a summer flannel. Yeah, yeah.
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It's got a tropical vibe to this whole thing, you know? I like it. I knew you would.
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Can you talk me through the technique of busting an eyebrow?
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And then what are the consequences of doing that maneuver incorrectly?
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You think that's going to enrich your life if I tell you? I'd love to know. I'd love to know.
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Well, you know, the it's it's we're in a better world as far as wrestling goes.
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But you don't get the fake versus real debate.
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But you used to get that all the time.
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And um the most believable and inexplicable to the wrestling cynic would be the busted eyebrow.
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Now, the problem is if you just punch somebody hard in the eye, chances are it's going to swell, but not necessarily open up.
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So, Robert Fuller, who was known by uh Tennessee Lee was one of his uh names in WWE, Colonel Parker in WCW, he was a third generation wrestler.
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Jacko not the force, and he taught me it's cut it punching down. It's like bam.
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So, it's not boom, it's boom. Catching an angle.
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You catch it at an angle.
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And uh there were old school guys who were specialists in it.
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So, I was one of the last of my generation to be like a willing participant in what is a terrible practice.
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The downside is yeah, it's believable.
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Downside you could go blind.
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In an ECW match against a guy named Tommy Dreamer, Tommy inaccurately believed that having been the participant in some of these hardways made me an expert in giving them, which I was not.
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And he wanted me to open them up hardway.
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So he wanted to go through the things that I'd gone through.
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And long story short, after about six punches missed every hit everywhere in his face except his eyebrow.
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I don't care how tough you are.
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You get punched in the nose, it's going to bring tears to your eyes, right?
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And after about five haymakers that land anywhere and I'm trying to go down. to catch the haymaker.
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You're trying to catch the haymaker.
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They're short They're punches, but they're still I'm hitting him below the eye and I'm hitting him in the nose and the forehead and he's getting welts on his head and he finally looked up to me through tears in his eyes and goes, "Would you PLEASE STOP BITING?" I LIKE IT. A LOT. Favorite one so far? I think so.
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He's out of the original the original buffalo. We'll take that.
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Can you give me one highlight and one lowlight from performing in Korakuen Hall in Tokyo?
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Trying to think of a lowlight cuz I I don't know.
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Do you know of a lowlight?
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Have I spoken of a lowlight?
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Well, I know you know, you're using like spools of barb wire instead of uh the ring rope and stuff like that.
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would jump to the conclusion that that was a lowlight?
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Yeah, for it would have been for me, Mick.
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I know you're you're built different. You're built different.
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You know, my my favorite barb wire match in Japan What is that?
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was actually not in Korakuen Hall, but in a small um a uh outside of Tokyo called Guma.
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It was January 10th, 1995 when Terry Funk and I did things that would have gotten us arrested in most countries in the world.
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And then in 2004, I did an angle with Randy Orton.
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We went back over some of the stuff I'd done in Japan and I saw he had my opponent in a backbreaker over his knee and I wrapped the barbed wire around my elbow arm and I came off the ring apron with the elbow and as I hit Rick Patterson flipped the guy. It looked incredible.
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And I and I looked up at that camera and went bang bang.
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And I just fast-forwarding 9 years, now it's 2004 and I'm watching the video and I was like, "You can feign a lot of things.
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You cannot feign the look of utter joy that I had after I dropped the elbow on Shoji Nakamaki."
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And I had to admit like, "Okay, maybe there was part of me that liked being in there and did not hate it."
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So, yeah, I I have some good memories.
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It was a It was really treated respectfully.
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You know, there was no vibe of like being uh you know, like an animal behind bars being shouted out.
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You When you're over there, it was really seen as a respectful endeavor. It's hot.
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I'm going to give them that. It's hot. There you go.
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And you're loving these wings, too, it looks like.
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Well, I'm even though it's hot. Going back in. Respect.
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Fact or fiction, the Mankind character is inspired in part by you reading Mary Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein and listening to Tori Amos. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit.
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Yeah, when I had the character and then you know, Mr.
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McMahon, have you heard your name yet?
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This is only like the third time I'd met him and I actually had heard the name was supposed to be Mason the Mutilator, which I thought that's that's the death knell of a career career right there. So, I had a chance.
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He goes He goes, "In this business, we've had crushers. We've had destroyers. We've had executioners.
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But, we've never had a mutilator."
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And I look at him and I said, "I like it. I like it a lot. But, what if?"
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And what if were the two best words.
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"What if instead of Mason, I was Mankind the Mutilator?"
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And I started telling him, "You know, it could be a double meaning, the destruction of mankind, the future of mankind."
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And that's again going back to Mary Shelley as the the creature who is made evil by society, not necessarily created to be that way.
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Uh and he took it all down.
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And sure enough, when I debuted, uh I wasn't There was no mutilator. It was just Mankind.
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And I'll go on the record as go as I'll go so far as to say it turned out to be pretty accurate. It worked out, right? out for you. It worked out well.
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I don't think I'm here as Mason the Mutilator. I don't think so. How about this?
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Is it uh Is it true that you don't muzzle Do you wrestle a bear in 1985?
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Yeah, I think my third match my fourth match of my career was against a bear. How'd that go? Not well. Uh They never go well.
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A bear is like eight to 10 times stronger than human being, right? Mhm.
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You know, the bears from Canada had killed a person.
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I mean, that's a historical fact. But, that's what we do.
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We say we can do things when we don't know if we can.
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So, I didn't know the danger I was in.
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I just knew that I jumped on its back trying to like turn it into a show.
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And the bear stood up and threw me across the ring.
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And that's when I realized a bear was eight to 10 times stronger than I was.
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Uh and I laid down and let that bear defeat me. I was humbled. Oh, yeah. Humbled big time. All right. Whiskey Smoke Ghost. I like it.
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I have a friend and colleague named ODB who has a food truck. Mhm.
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And she uses a whiskey whiskey sauce which is really good on her barbecue.
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That's good and a little hot, but no problem for you. I'm okay with it.
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I think it's these green things that kind of caught you. Mhm. I think so.
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Just got to point out this is for my kids' sake. I'm on milk.
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Yeah, I'm actually going to join you at the party over here.
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So in your documentary with A&E, there's a scene where you direct the cameraman to shoot your flying elbow from a lower angle so that it can truly capture the depth appreciate the depth of that flight.
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Is it typical for wrestlers to direct their performances with that degree of specificity? It is now.
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It is now in that the producers will seek out the wrestlers and and try to get the best possible camera shot.
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But I was doing this move coming off the cam coming off the ring apron that I mean if you guys see me walk in, right? I struggle a little bit.
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That's largely because that one move was the poorest skeletal choice I could possibly just rattles you.
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So there's nothing as well there's more other things in life more frustrating than missing a move, but I'm saying it is frustrating when you do something big, you go back to watch it and it doesn't come across in the way you hoped it would. That's that risk reward.
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There's got to be the reward side. to be. Got to be.
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That doesn't explain why I would do that stupid move on non-televised house shows though, right?
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But that's just because you know, you you're a showman. Yeah.
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I used to feel like you know, there might be two people out there who drive will travel 300 miles.
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They deserve to see me get hurt.
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So I took that seriously. I'm not feeling it. There you go.
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Maybe you're just in the clear.
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I'm kind of feeling it a little bit.
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It's good, but it doesn't have that doesn't have the kick that uh This power jab, yeah.
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Power jab, I think, so far that made me the most uncomfortable.
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How would you quantify the influence of someone like Stanley Sherman?
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Oh, okay, the mask maker.
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He was a master of his craft.
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The mask was far more intricate than people thought.
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But for my cameo videos, I wear a knockoff that was made in Thailand.
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And for the life of me, I can't really TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
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WHEN I CONTACTED THE YOUNG MAN FROM THAILAND, he thought I was trying to get him in trouble.
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And I was like, "No, I just want to know the secret."
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I want you to make me a mask, man.
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Yeah, I kept I was using those little Amazon rubber masks. So, I'm pretty good.
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Yeah, the the young man did a nice job. Thailand.
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Oh, shoutout to Thailand. Thank you, Thailand. Mask makers of Thailand. All right.
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Well, this is the sauce makers of Kansas City, okay.
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The bomb beyond insanity.
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This one I think will catch both of us.
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Kansas City knows their barbecue, too.
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It'll be almost immediate.
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Oh, yeah, it is immediate.
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This is just outright cruel. Wow. Oh, yeah, no.
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That's like watching a Japanese death match with no storytelling, right?
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It's just it's just Just violence, yeah. thing of violence, yeah.
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And you're telling me these next two could get worse?
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So, potentially, but Mick, I'd never lie to you. Yeah.
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Uh nothing is going to be as bad as what you just ate ever.
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Nothing will be as bad as what you just ate ever, trust me. I That's a promise.
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Have you promised on that? That's a promise. Okay. Yeah.
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Can I remove this from my sight? Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Get it out of here.
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And then just be careful around the eyes. Yeah, yeah.
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So, I know that behind the twisted persona of your professional career, there's really a kid at heart, a self-described roller coaster addict, someone who has a permanent room in their house dedicated to Christmas. I know. I know. I know.
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What makes the Hallmark original movie Christmas at Pemberley Manor one of your most beloved films of all time?
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Ah, I'm going to be honest. It was a good movie.
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I think I had a pandemic crush going on on Jessica Lowndes. I did like it.
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It was really a really good story, but it's all about the chemistry, right?
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I don't watch them as much as I used to.
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Yeah, you used to be into it.
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I saw I had a whole post where you ranked your favorite Hallmark Christmas movies.
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Yeah, and that's how you knew about Pemberley Manor. Yeah.
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Yeah, Pemberley It's a good one.
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I I think in retrospect, maybe Finding Father Christmas Oh. was the better movie. there at the top.
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Maybe a little controversy, yeah. Yeah.
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We all had those pandemic crushes, right? Right. Yeah, yeah.
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You're not alone in this.
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Yeah, some people turned to drinking.
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I went with long-distance unreasonable crushes, yeah.
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It was I went from Jessica Lowndes to Janice from Friends.
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That's a Hey, you're a guy with some range.
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You're a guy with some range. Oh my god. I go, "Oh my god. I love you, Janice.
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If you're out there, Maggie Wheeler."
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And she did a cameo for me that was dynamite. Really, yeah. So, yeah.
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I wanted to have my own Janice shirt made cuz I can do that through Pro Wrestling Tees. Yeah, yeah.
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You're a man who's connected.
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with a shirt that says oh my God.
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So that's when you know you've been indoors too long when you start yearning for Janice from Friends. Oh God, okay.
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You can tell he didn't actually take a bite.
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We have this over the shoulder cameras, too. Now not fun.
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By any stretch, but after the last one. Burns the lips for sure. Yep.
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Now it's burning my esophagus. It's a compound.
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It's it's compounding on me.
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playing well with the last one, either.
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But we're almost to finish line. We're almost there.
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Do you have an all-time favorite Jim Ross call? Oh, you got to go.
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I mean there are great hidden calls, and Jim's got a new book coming out about his 50 greatest calls and the stories behind them, which is should be a must read for any, you know, die-hard wrestling fan.
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But I mean what say you're watching the World Cup and a team goes up three nothing.
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And you see memes across the globe that say enough's enough, would stop the damn match.
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I mean it's a tie with me between God as my witness, he's been broken in half, and enough's enough, would somebody stop the damn match from the same match, only a few minutes apart.
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I mean he was really in his zone.
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And it was great that he didn't know about it.
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So he was calling it as he felt it.
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And even if he does know something, you know, might be happening, he is the ultimate professional and just does a great job bringing those matches to life.
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But since I'm here as a WWE guy, Michael Cole does a darn good job, too. All right, the last dab.
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You know how I escaped the wing eating contest?
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How did you Yeah, how did you?
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I thought you could contend with like 40 to 50 wings.
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Then I found out the woman sitting next to me had won it with 470.
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And they're like They're just like skin stretched over bone. Yeah, right.
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I They were I mean, I got through and they do them in two like 15-minute rounds.
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And I realized I take a pause during that rest period, I thought, I'm going to throw up.
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I said, I got to get out of here. Catch me cheating.
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And I could see when the camera's on me, and then I do I see myself on the scoreboard, I go like I'm looking at it, and I go like four wings in my fanny pack, and they came over and disqualified me.
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And then I did my best All everything in my ability to act as shocked as I could, outraged I was actually in shock.
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And I'd say like 18 seconds after I was caught cheating and thrown out of the Wing Bowl, I get a buzzer on my phone, and I see it's TMZ.
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And I go, I think I'm still relevant, you know.
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So, that made news around the world.
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Uh but this is a far more fulfilling psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.
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All right, is that enough sauce on there? That's plenty. That's plenty. That's plenty. Contemplative. Yeah.
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$10, I'll chug this whole bottle. I can't do that to you. Throw in the towel. Enough.
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But the good news is We're done?
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This inferno match, our version of an inferno match, we've survived it. We've conquered it.
21:25
And you know, to close things out as someone who's been an ambassador to this thing, what do you see as your lasting influence on wrestling?
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I like to think I treated people well.
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I like to think that was my lasting impression.
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Because I remember coming up through the ranks and not being treated well.
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And then I remember big stars going out of their way to be kind to me and I thought if I ever get to be in this position, that's the way I'm going to treat people cuz I like how this feels.
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So I I that's the way I hope I'm remembered.
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You know, I still uh my um one of my hobbies, I do about 40 handwritten letters uh from Santa.
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When I had my hip and knee replaced in two different operations 2017, I really worked on my handwriting.
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And so I hope that uh people remember like that guy from the cell, like he wrote my kid.
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He's been writing my kid letters from Santa for like 7 years.
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So I that's honestly what I hope my um my legacy is that I treated people well. Well, you know what?
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The performance today will only build on that legacy, Mick Foley.
22:33
Coming in here, doing the kids proud, taking on the Wings of Death, living to tell the tale.
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And now there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you.
22:40
This camera, this camera, this camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life. Not much.
22:51
Just trying to make a quick buck off my name, you know. No, no, I do.
22:58
If you want to know where I'll be in the world, realmickfoley.
22:59
com and check out the events page Uh the the cameos and um and that's I believe all that I have going on. Correct me if I'm wrong. I Thank you. APPRECIATE IT. THANK YOU.
23:22
OH, GET A LITTLE SANTA IN THERE. All right.
23:27
Wait, look, I'm going to show you and then your reaction will will tell the tale whether or not this is Santa's handwriting.
23:35
Is that Santa's handwriting? Oh my god. That's You do that? Yeah, that's my hand. Yeah. Boom.
23:45
Hot Ones fans, it's been years in the making, but at long last, the next big thing in wings is finally here.
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Introducing Hot Ones Buffalo Sauce.
23:55
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24:06
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24:10
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