"I thought he didn't have any talent" - Vince McMahon on WWE legend
WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was against signing Hall of Famer Mick Foley and thought the then ECW star did not have "any talent."
Mick Foley was a part of WCW and later joined ECW, where he had a two-year stint. Foley then joined Vince McMahon's WWE in 1996 and had a legendary career. He became a world champion in the company, as well as a multi-time tag team champion.
In his latest A&E Biography, Vince McMahon discussed Foley's Cactus Jack character and how he felt about it. McMahon also said he felt Foley didn't have any talent.
“I thought it was kind of degrading to our product. I thought he didn't have any talent. I thought it was déclassé. Mick always had that connection with the audience and I never really saw [that] before he came here. I thought, ‘Boy, We’re never going to hire that guy,’ but he did. He had that connection and very few people have that.” (H/T Fightful)
But Foley went on to prove the WWE Chairman wrong and became an integral part of the Attitude Era. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
How Vince McMahon was convinced to sign Mick Foley
WWE's Bruce Prichard revealed how he and a few others in the company tried to convince Vince McMahon to sign Mick Foley. He tried to use the human aspect of Foley's character on ECW to persuade the WWE Chairman to sign Foley.
"So, you sell the human being and the rest will come. Also during this time, Jack was doing a character in ECW that he was anti-hardcore or he was hardcore – the stuff that I loved and that I was able to show Vince a different side of Cactus was he was riding the merry go round with his daughter chanting ‘I’m hardcore!’ and then riding around in the little train in the amusement park and sitting in a side headlock for 15 minutes in a match and chanting ‘I’m hardcore!’"
Prichard stated that Vince McMahon wasn't a fan of "gore" or "crazy bumps" so he used the "intelligence and psychology" of Foley's Cactus Jack character to convince McMahon.
What do you make of Mick Foley's talents? Do you think he should have won more gold during his WWE tenure? Let us know in the comment section below!
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