Mick Foley thinks botches ‘reality’ can actually add to a match, not take away from it.
One match in particular he was thinking of at this time was one of his famous clashes in WCW. At Spring Stampede 1994, Foley—then known as Cactus Jack— teamed with Maxx Payne in a Chicago Street Fight.
They took on the Nasty Boys, a hard-hitting duo infamous for their extremely physical matches. This match was meant to be Mick Foley’s last one before getting surgery to fix the ear ripped off during a match with Vader.
He wanted to go out with a bang, although the match didn’t go as planned. The finish was ruined, as the table Foley was meant to go through broke when he and Brian Knobbs stood up on it. They managed to improvise, and Mick Foley took a shovel to the face for a creative, albeit very painfil, ending to the bout.
However, Mick Foley doesn’t see it as a botch. He spoke with WWE Vault on YouTube about them match, and the former WWE Champion gave his view on the mistake, and how botches are like “doses of reality”.
“It was like watching a car wreck.” Foley said. “I don’t like my sports entertainment to look perfect. I’m the protégé of Terry Funk, who would deliberately make sure certain moves didn’t look perfect because life’s not perfect. What some people see as botches, I see as doses of reality.”
“The table breaks, okay? And this is where I take a sideward bump onto the concrete—bam. Because I didn’t land flat, but more on one shoulder blade than the other, I ended up with a serious, serious bone bruise. Now, you’d think that’s enough to end a match, right? But instead, I see the scoop shovel.”
