The BEST Wrestling Moment Every Year (1989 - 2026)
32. 1995 | Cane Dewey
Mick Foley might be the single most underrated performer in pro wrestling history.
Known primarily as a kingmaker with a magical ability to elevate those on the threshold of the main event, he should probably receive far more credit for being the third most important and over wrestler throughout WWE’s second boom period. As sharp as the tacks he would ritually puncture himself with, Foley was arguably the first man to draw true heat from the jaded smarks who would often only respond to something approaching real, barbaric violence.
Foley, during his legendary stint in ECW, wrestled a match and was distracted upon sighting a sign in the crowd: ‘Cane Dewey’. Dewey, Foley’s son, was three years old. Foley was legitimately and quite rightly disgusted. He realised then that his life’s work was a joke, the dumbest crusade to win over the most disgusting people, and articulated this in a legendary, haunting promo during which he did very well not to break down entirely - or rather, to convince you of that.
It was a work. Foley made a gimmick out of it and, by 1998, was prone to destroying his body to extremes far more dangerous than in the promotion named after it.
Foley’s subsequent anti-hardcore schtick was genius. He saved his body, for a brief time, by wrestling intentionally boring matches, and by depriving the animals of their blood, he discovered a way of generating an authentic emotional reaction from a smartened-up crowd. By taking it further and professing his desire to return to WCW, this already legendary moment was a very early example of using tribalism to further one’s career.