10 Wrestling Rituals You Didn't Know About
4. Tori Amos Is Mick Foley's Happy Place
To have watched his career play out, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Mick Foley was pretty damn fearless. Like the rest of us would in his situation, though, even the Hardcore Legend got the jitters when confronted with the reality of being slapped around by barbed wire, set on fire, or being blown up.
For Foley, the matches for which he'd be particularly nervous or fearful, he'd turn to the trusty tones of Tori Amos.
As Mick has detailed over the years, it was during a match in Japan back in 1993 that he first discovered the delicate delights of Amos. While the rest of his fellow wrestlers were getting psyched up by listening to death metal and hard rock, Mick was offered a Tori Amos cassette by Maxx Payne - and from that moment on, Mick Foley had a special bond with Tori Amos, and in particular her song Winter.
During interviews, Foley has detailed how four such matches where Winter was his pre-match choice to calm him were his two brutal matches against Terry Funk in Japan, his Backlash 2004 war with Randy Orton, and his insane WrestleMania 22 battle with Edge.
As Mick told Slate:
"Again, though, why that song? I think it comes down to confidence. In all four of those matches, my anxiety was high, my confidence low. All four matches offered not only the possibility but the near certainty of injury. And in all four of those cases, I sat down by myself, rocking back and forth slowly, letting that voice take me far away from my doubts and insecurities. 'When you gonna make up your mind? When you gonna love you as much as I do?'”