Mick Foley may very well be one of the most brilliant entertainers that came out of the world of professional wrestling. Three time WWE Champion, a member of the WWE Hall of Fame, New York Times Best Selling Author (to date he has penned five books) to loving and caring deeply for the traditions of Christmas. (He is a true ambassador for Santa Clause.) He also has braved the world of one man show spoken word stand-up comedy and taken it head on and has shown to be very funny and successful in that genre as well. Whether you are a wrestling fan or not, Mick’s shares his stories of years of wrestling with so much honesty that they’re irresistible as entertainment and intrigue.Mick is now touring comedy clubs all across the nation sharing his milestone story “TWENTY YEARS OF HELL.” The Hardcore Legend, as Mick is respectfully called, will share an in-depth story of super hero proportions about the most famous match of his hall of fame career, which is arguably one of the most talked about performances in sports-entertainment history. Let’s take a journey back to June 28, 1998, the night of the infamous WWE Hell in a Cell match. On that night Mick Foley by a miraculous act from God not once but twice falls off a humongous high-rise cell structure, is unconscious, comes to, refuses medical treatment and is stretcher bound, but gets back on his feet bruised and blood soaked with his front tooth logged in his nose and he finished the match with fellow WWE legend The Undertaker.
What made you decide to pick Nashville as a stop on your 20 Years of Hell tour?
Well Nashville has been a great city for me and I have been to Zanies twice before and we definitely wanted to do a few shows in the southern part of the United States so we are hitting Nashville, Huntsville and Birmingham, Alabama as well. I hope people are willing to drive a little ways because out of the twenty shows in North American those are the only three we are doing below the Mason-Dixon line.
[In July 2014 Mick Foley did a one man show in Austin Texas for his “Tales from Wrestling Past” in which the Undertaker was in attendance, he mentions that in this next answer.]
Has the Undertaker seen the show and have you and he discussed the 20 year anniversary of the match?
This is a show that is entirely dedicated to the 20 year anniversary so he has seen a show but not this show. The words that he and I shared that night in Austin, Texas I guess four years ago come to life in this show and had a pronounced effect on me. I have only done the show twice and it has really elicited a nice response from people.
Is this a comedy performance or is it more like spoken word?
It’s spoken word with the stories there is a lot of laughs, but I don’t base the success of the show on how many laughs I get. I base it on the way people feel when they leave the venue and so far we are two for two and Nashville is the third show and I suspect that will be the same thing people will really enjoy themselves.
The last time you where in Nashville, ahead of me in line at the meet and greet was a couple and the husband was a Marine who had just returned home from deployment, and he told you he was more excited to meet you than the time he met President Obama. How did that make you feel?
(Laughs) I have actually heard that a few times from service members. It is truly flattering. There was one injured service member one instance, his uncle came running after me, the soldier was in ICU and he said his nephew had just missed the President, he could dare [not] miss Mick Foley as well; it’s the mindset of people like him that put me in a very lofty position.
You are doing a Q&A during this show; will that portion be no-holds barred when it comes to fans’ participation?
Yeah every subject is fair game. I do like the questions to be respectful. I can count on one hand the number of times in doing it all these years the questions have not been respectful but I give people honest answers and answer them to the best of my ability, and I am very open with my opinions, I tell it like I think it is or should be.
In that Hell in a Cell Match at the end, after all the aftermath, the Undertaker laid out a bag of thumb tacks and pinned you in them. Were the thumbtacks real?
(Laughs) Yeah I think to this day they have not found a way to make thumbtacks stick to human flesh unless they are real. Unless there is some type of magnetic field I am unaware of. With all of the things that went on with the match it was hard, something that was of equal impressiveness to end the match. And you know at that time tacks had not been used in the U.S. they were solely a Japanese creation. I was a part of the first ever push-pin misery match in Japan, and so I am kind of like the guy who brought the starlings over to the U.S., seemed like a good idea but became something of a nuisance.
Is there any chance Mr. Socko is going to make a appearance at this show in Nashville?
Well Mr. Socko had not been created yet at the time of the Cell Match. It is highly unlikely but you never know I mean we are going to have some special guests in the audience who played a role in my past, a couple of people from the country music world are stopping by to see the show, so you never know what can happen, every show is different and I am really looking forward to telling these stories at Zanies in Nashville.
