Mick Foley said the enthusiasm of AEW and Tony Khan’s visible joy in his own product pulled him back into wrestling after he had drifted away from it.
Speaking to The Sportster, the WWE Hall of Famer said he stepped back for a few years after his children moved out.
“I loved and appreciated wrestling for many years after I retired. But I had kind of fallen out of love a little bit, just taking a break, as they say, and I started seeing the enthusiasm of AEW, and I was contrasting it with kind of like the more corporate feel that WWE took on, and I just thought I like one of these things a little better than the other.”
“There’s something really refreshing about seeing the owner of the company so obviously happy after matches, so obviously thankful for how hard people work for him. I’m not saying that Vincent McMahon’s management style didn’t work, because it did. It’s just at my age, there’s something really nice about seeing an owner who is really happy to watch his product and to watch the people excel inside of it.”
Foley also discussed Darby Allin, who has named Foley as a major influence.
“I see Darby as someone who took the inspiration from Cactus Jack and added a whole lot of athleticism to it, did things that I could have never done, and he’s created a hybrid style… In the same way that I basically took one part Bruiser Brody, one part Tommy Billington, and made it my own.”