15 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Mick Foley's Hell In A Cell
14. Mick’s Crazy Barometer For “A Good Match”
VICE's doc raced through Foley's formative years. This wasn't 'Beyond The Mat', so there wasn't much scope for stories about Mick's upbringing or that tale about hitchhiking to Madison Square Garden to see Jimmy Snuka leap off a cage. Instead, the producers focused on Foley's in-built need to draw emotional responses from people around him. It didn't matter if those reactions were good or bad.
Mick outright says early on in the episode that he “didn’t think [he] was having a good match unless [he] was having trouble getting back to his hotel room” afterwards. Again, that mindset was born from an insatiable need to “be liked”. He realised during college that he could also get a similar buzz from disgusting people or shocking them. Foley didn’t enjoy the pain he was putting himself through, but enjoyed that he could take it and sell that within a wrestling context.
Basically, this desire to pull emotional responses from others grew arms and legs.
This is where VICE got clever. They served up this tantalising piece of insight into Mick's psyche then pulled right back. Suddenly, viewers were taken on a rollercoaster tour past the rest of Foley's upbringing and teen years into his ascent as a pro wrestler. Like true storytellers, the doc's writers knew they could always come back to this thought later on. They did.
It's wild to hear Mick flat out say he didn't think he'd put a proper shift in if he wasn't in pain after the match though. How is this dude still walking in 2025?!