Mick Foley considers himself to be the best of transitional champions in wrestling.
Mick Foley calls himself “the Bret Hart of transitional champions” during the latest episode of his podcast, Foley is Pod, during a conversation about the pressures that Shawn Michaels faced as WWE Champion in 1996 potentially being a catalyst for his backstage behavior at the time.
“As an in-ring performer, [Shawn Michaels] was just exceptional, just incredible, and if anything, only went on to lay claim for what I say is “the best wrestler of his generation,” which I define by monthly pay-per-views,” says Mick Foley of Shawn Michaels. “Clearly, we were in that generation with the monthly pay-per-views. I never had a cross word with him and all my time with him. I understood that he could be a problem, other people had said that, but I had not experienced that. I think it’s a credit to him that he was so open to ideas, he actually welcomed them. Because at the time, the champion was still kind of carrying the company.
“There was a lot of pressure on the champion, pressure that I didn’t feel because I was a transitional champion,” Mick Foley continued. “I’ll argue that I was the greatest — I was the Bret Hart of transitional champions, right? The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. But I never had to carry the company on my back, whereas Shawn was. There’s a lot of mental fatigue that goes into that and if you were the champion, you were out there representing the company at appearances, early morning radio, those types of things. So when we knew we were going to work together, he was really open to outside-the-box ideas.”
Mick Foley on Foley Is Pod
Mick Foley still considers his match with Shawn Michaels at WWE In Your House: Mind Games to be the second-favorite match of his career.
H/T to Fightful for transcription
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