Mick Foley Discusses Retiring In 2012, Says He Was Concussed Every Match In TNA

On a recent episode of Foley is Pod, Mick Foley revealed that due to his head injuries he can no longer ride big roller coasters. Mick went on to discuss retiring in a neurologist’s office, how he started becoming concussed on a regular basis in TNA, and how after a King of the Mountain match in TNA he should have retired then. Read excerpts below:

On when he officially retired from any physical wrestling: “2012. I did a memoir, my Santa memoir, knowing that people weren’t going to read it. It was a really small part of the Foley electorate. But I talked about what a big deal it was to have that opportunity to portray that character because it was a tough time for me.”

On retiring in a neurologists office: “Retiring in a neurologists office, shaking the neurologist’s hand when he said “you should never wrestle again.” That’s different than deciding for yourself that the gig is up. It was also a time when I had a real aversion to bright lights. There were some photos taken when I was doing the one-man shows where I’m in sunglasses, which is a ridiculous look for me. But I couldn’t take the lights.”

On TNA Meet and Greets negatively affecting his health: “One of the drawbacks to TNA, which I didn’t know at the time; I didn’t know why I was getting these terrible headaches two days into a four-five day run. TNA was really accessible to fans. They did the meet and greets; probably too many meet and greets. If you came away from an Impact show and you didn’t meet six wrestlers, you hadn’t tried very hard. But they would do the meet and greets and everyone had the flashes. Now it’s different, the cameras don’t need the flashes as often. Those blinding flashes were coming at me. So the first two days of the tour I’d be fine, I’d be having fun. The next two days I didn’t want to be around people.”

On getting concussed in every match, three in the King of the Mountain: “I had the serious ramifications and I was also getting concussions just about every time that I wrestled. You still have that old school ethic, “I’ve got one more left in me.” There was a match, King of the Mountain. I got my bell rung three times during the match. Now, on almost every other occasion when I felt like I was light-headed the next day, had a minor head injury, I would be able to look at the footage and say “okay, that’s where it happened.” In this case, in all three times I was thinking “oh, I think they missed a camera shot.”

On realizing the concussions were from normal moves: “Samoa Joe, just regular forearms. [While it was happening] I was like, wow, is he stiffing me! Then I look at the tape, and he wasn’t stiffing me. It was just that it didn’t take much to rattle me anymore. So on all three occasions, couldn’t figure out the source of the bell-ringing and then I finally realized; I get it. It takes less and less to hurt me worse and worse, for longer and longer periods of time.”

On regretting not retiring right then: “One of my big regrets is that the moment I put the period on that sentence [in his “Countdown to Lockdown” book], that should’ve been it. Once you know that’s the gig? The gig is up. Instead, I did a few more matches. But that was a really difficult time for me. In rapid succession: I couldn’t wrestle. At the time, I was online volunteering for a group called RAINN, but the computer was giving me bad headaches. And the roller coaster… everything I really enjoyed. It was a tough time for me.”

If you use any of the above quotations, please credit Foley is Pod h/t 411mania for the transcription.