It is understandable that Mick Foley doesnt necessarily look too kindly on his time in WCW. After constantly sacrificing his health and wellbeing in some of the most brutal matches in the companys history (including that one time he lost an ear), Foley was never able to earn any real respect or career advancement. There are a lot of examples that Foley cites in his books of odd treatment and storylines in Atlanta, but there is one particularly shining example that stands out the Lost in Cleveland debacle. Foley and Big Van Vader had been having an intense rivalry, and in one of their televised matches Vader delivered a sickening power bomb to Foley on the concrete outside the ring that made him black out. Whilst an incident like this could potentially be turned into wrestling storyline gold, Dusty Rhodes (who was booking at the time) managed to turn it into wrestling storyline mould. Rather than simply using the event to intensify the rivalry to new heights, Rhodes (who was in the midst of a fascination with making short films that would make Ed Wood blush) told Foley of his plans to turn him into an AWOL vagrant with amnesia that was induced by the power bomb. Understandably Foley was sceptical about the logic of such a storyline direction, but when told that hed be paid to be off the road for a few months, he did what any wrestler would probably do in the same situation and said yes sir. This lead to some of the oddest of vignettes and creative choices in the history of a company now known for specialising in odd vignettes and creative choices. Essentially Foley was to play a character who not only couldnt remember being Cactus Jack, but was convinced he was a sailor. He was living on the streets in Cleveland with a colourful cast of vagrants and crazies including a girlfriend called bang bang - despite the fact this was Cactus Jack's catchphrase and he supposedly couldnt remember being him. WCW then profiled these revelations through some of the cheesiest false news reports ever committed to television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tQ2p91aWdA As if all this wasnt convoluted and odd enough, they ended the angle by doing a swerve and having Foley reveal that he was pretending to be an amnesiac the entire time. So essentially months of filming and bizarre news stories were thrown out the window to bring the angle back to where it should have been from the beginning.
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