This is the kind of shyt I was putting up with - despite the fact that I was on the booking committee. That’s why it pissed me off when Mick Foley blamed me for not recognizing his full potential during that period. In his book, Have A Nice Day, Foley wrote, “Ric Flair was every bit as bad on the booking side of things as he was great on the wrestling side of it.”
First of all, I’ll never call myself a great booker, because wrestling always came first. But Foley took a shot at me. Here’s his receipt - I’m taking a shot at him.
When I first started on the booking committee, Foley was working as Cactus Jack and doing an angle where he was living in a homeless shelter. I admit it - I didn’t know what to do with a 300-pound guy living in a homeless shelter. It took P.T. Barnum, in the form of Vince McMahon, to take a guy whose claim to fame was his willingness to get thrown off a cage, to turn him into Mankind, and make him into a champion.
Foley has a cult following because of his contribution to hardcore wrestling. But hardcore is such a small part of the history of this business. When I was training, falling off a ladder was not a prerequisite to making it as a professional wrestler. Being fundamentally sound was. Occasionally seeing the inside of a gym was. When I trained under Verne Gagne, we started with 500 free squats, 250 push-ups, 250 sit-ups and a two-mile run over farm terrain in zero-degree weather. Then we came back to the barn to be wrestled into submission, cross-faced into submission, stretched into submission - and if Verne didn’t like the way things were going, we’d start all over. He would have looked at Mick Foley on day one - after Mick failed to do even one thing Verne required - and said, “Mick, I don’t think so.”
I don’t care how many thumbtacks Mick Foley has fallen on, how many ladders he’s fallen off of, how many continents he’s supposedly bled on, he’ll always be known as a glorified stuntman.
Verne Gagne didn’t fall off a ladder. Dory Funk, Jr. didn’t fall off a ladder. Neither did Wahoo, Steamboat, or Steve Austin. Terry Funk was a great worker before he started doing that. Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, and Chris Jericho can do it and maintain their reputations because they’re already respected as athletes. And what about people who never did anything else, like the Sandman? He’s no wrestler. Hardcore became a niche for a lot of guys who couldn’t do fukk-all in the ring.
I’m not saying that Mick Foley wasn’t a star, that he wasn’t a great attraction. But in my estimation, Mick Foley was not a great worker. He couldn’t punch. He couldn’t kick. In the World Wrestling Federation, he’d spend half the day before television broadcasts sucking up to the writers - because he’s such a fan of himself.
There’s a difference between being a great performer and being a guy - like Brutus Beefcake or the Ultimate Warrior - who became famous because he happened to be working for Vince. It’s the same with Foley. When he hasn’t been working for Vince, there’s been no demand for him whatsoever. He’s just another guy.
Mick Foley doesn’t understand what it was like to be on that booking committee. Jim Herd humiliated me and made me cut my hair - after I’d won the NWA championship six times. How much power did I have? When I was going through all that, how should I have been able to look at Mick Foley, push everything else aside, and mold him into a superstar?
Sting, on the other hand, was worthy of becoming the champion.
I saw him from afar but that was ether to 11 year old me. fukk you Mr. DiLeo and your shytty Rockin' Robin act
It till kills me inside though 
But it is what it is.
