Mick Foley is known as the Hardcore Legend for a reason.
The iconic superstar has put his body through some serious punishment over the years, and he’s still been paying the price – – for an unrivaled career in wrestling with countless injuries.
Foley has taken an opportunity to reflect on his various breaks, wounds and near-misses, and he’s ranked the most painful situations he’s found himself in.
‘Well, thethat you can see it doesn’t look like the left ear. Lost that bad boy in Munich, Germany 20 years ago,’ he explained.
‘I never had developed cauliflower ear when I lost it, but that’s probably the number one injury. [The most painful injury] was a torn abdominal muscle. I was ashamed when I found out I hadn’t broken my pelvis because that’s what it felt like to me.
‘So I did not know at the time that torn abdominal muscles ruin careers for football or hockey, because you lose the ability to explode, you know from the midsection. Now luckily, in wrestling, we can work around injuries.’
Number three of his list was his hip injuries, which heavily impacted his day to day life.
Speaking during a chiropractic adjustment by , he added: ‘I’d been told early on that, but by virtue of the fact that I was diving off ring aprons onto the concrete, that I was going to pay a price and I’ll be honest, had I known is going to be that severe — from probably 2004 through 2017.
‘It was really, it was a pretty difficult existence. I would get on a plane and I would ask for a bottle of water right away, and I put the bottle of water full underneath my hamstring and I would roll it just to try to get the nerves firing up.
‘So I would say the right hip, and then the right knee, which was awful. It was locked, I think it may be 18 degrees, maybe 27. I don’t know. But anyway, what happens with that is you stop walking correctly
‘Between the right leg locked up and the hip giving me so much trouble, you end up walking side-to-side to eliminate the pain in the nerves, and then you are basically waddling without realising you’re wobbling.’
For number five, Mick recalled almost losing both of his pinky fingers during a Barbed Wire Deathmatch against Terry Funk back in 1995.
He said: ‘I tried that same move that cost me my ear. Looking back, maybe I should have taken that item off the menu after losing the ear, but I did it in the barbed wire, and the wire didn’t hold my weight and it ended up snagging me.
‘So when I went down — there’s a photo of me sitting on the floor with both my pinkies caught with the wire. So that was one of the things it’s just… it just almost does away with your small fingers.’
