7 Times Wrestlers Got Chewed Out LIVE ON-AIR
6. Mick Foley
A Pedigree into drawing pins. Enough chair shots to the head traumatise his children and scramble his brain equal measure. Getting thrown from the top of the Hell In A Cell structure through a table below. None of these things hurt him enough to stop working for the company he loved.
That took being produced by Vince McMahon on commentary in 2008. 'The Hardcore Legend' had again decided to step away from the ring, but was drafted in to the announce team as a replacement for fellow ECW alumni Tazz, and brought a welcoming combination of warmth and gravitas to the role as a man who had seen and done every version of the thing he was covering. Naturally, McMahon hated all of this. By then a megalomaniac micromanager with even less reason to listen to anybody else, his reputation for verbally abusing commentators through their headset had become legendary for all the wrong reasons, and as Foley later attested, he took every opportunity to loudly chew out the former WWE Champion for the tiniest of perceived indiscretions.
As a wrestler, Foley had done anything and everything the role required and then some, but he'd also had no problem walking away when he felt strongly enough about directions he didn't agree with. Having left a sweetheart deal in 2001, he did the same again after a particularly fierce bollocking. As he put it when asked about it - "I don’t care who you are or how much you’re worth, you’re not gonna talk to me that way ever again". It caused a rift between the two that lasted well over a year, which - for a noted McMahon apologist such as Foley - was longer than he would have liked.