10 Wrestlers Who Changed WWE’s In-Ring Style
5. Mick Foley
Mick Foley, as Cactus Jack, was a massively enterprising talent.
Though deceptively big, he wasn't defined enough to attain stardom in the WWF. And though deceptively gifted, mechanically, he was no Ric Flair or Anderson - but he managed to find success in their home of WCW, in the early nineties, by popularising hardcore wrestling in the mainstream.
His matches opposite Vader and Sting were legendarily brutal - a sharp contrast to the technical fare synonymous with the league. But Foley was no one-dimensional bloodletter - he used his fearsome reputation to craft a novel anti-hardcore character during his mid-nineties ECW stint, one who would intentionally wrestle a dull style to antagonise the bloodthirsty Philadelphia natives.
In the WWF, Foley's matches, pre-King Of The Ring, were violent - but it was on that night that he popularised the stunt in WWE. By falling from such a frightening height from atop Hell In A Cell, Foley forged a landscape on which even the most limited of talents, like Shane McMahon in particular, could pop crowds with daredevil theatrics.
Foley, in introducing barbed wire, thumbtacks and fire to WWE, also expanded its arsenal beyond the ubiquitous steel chair, ring bell and title belt.