Mick Foley had some confessions to make recently.
On the latest episode of his “Foley Is Pod” podcast that’s featured on AdFreeShows.com, Mick Foley spoke about his comeback to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2012 after a run in TNA. Mick Foley would also talk about his health.
Mick Foley Is Paying A Huge Price For Professional Wrestling
At one point, Mick Foley noticed that he was shorter than what he used to be, three inches to be exact. When that shock hit him, he underwent neurological work on his spine.
“He said, ‘We’ve been looking over your MRIs and your X-rays. You’ve got too many issues. You got muscular, neurological, skeletal, and even if we are able to help from a neurological standpoint, there’s nothing we can do with those other things.’ I’m looking at all these things I did during the course of my career and I mean, I’m paying a steeper price than I thought imaginable.
I thought oh, yeah, of course my hips are going to be sore, my knees are going to be hurting, I’m going to be arthritic, but now I’m curved around like this, you know? I know saying tough times are relative. There’s other people who say, ‘I would trade lives with you. I’m getting up at 6am. I’m working two jobs to make ends meet.’ Nonetheless, this was pretty devastating for me and so I was going back to WWE in a really tough, dark place. It was a tough time for me. The concussions. Seeing the fallout. Seeing how much I lost in height.
The doctor said, ‘We got your MRIs back.’ This is before they even decided not to do the surgery. I said, ‘How is it?’ He goes, ‘It’s a bad MRI’, and I went, ‘How bad?’ and He proceeded to talk like five different discs, all things that I kind of knew, but it still stings when you actually see the proof. Now I find out it’s not just the discs, it’s the spine itself.”
Mick Foley also discussed his doctor advising him to never get in the ring again.
“I met with Dr. Cantu. I came back two weeks later. He looks me in the eye and he says, ‘You should never wrestle again.’ I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘I can work an entire match around my left knee’, and I’m so proud of that. It’s almost like if I can’t have Here lies Mr. In Your House.
No one came through bigger when it mattered less on my epitaph that I want, that I can work an entire match around my left knee because it showed me that doggone it, I was still one of the boys. Dr. Cantu looked at me and he said, ‘Mr. Foley, when we met two weeks ago, you struck me as a bright young man.’ It was his word, young.
He said, ‘Since then, I’ve been reading about you. You have a lot going on for you.’ He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘If you want to get another neurologist to clear you, that’s your business, but I’m telling you, you should never wrestle again.’ What that did, it was essentially a matter of throwing in the towel. There was somebody taking the bat out of my hand and I felt this enormous sense of relief. I really did.”