WWE Told You This Wrestler Was Shorter Than He Actually Is?!
Rare example of WWE actually decreasing someone's size on TV, but why?
Mick Foley has revealed that WWE routinely announced him as shorter than he actually is on TV. This unexpected story came out randomly when Mick was reminiscing about feuds with The Undertaker on his 'Foley Is Pod' show.
Foley himself still isn't sure why the company decided to do this. Typical WWF hyperbole of the time was prone to increasing heights and weights to appear more impressive, but they did the complete opposite with Mick's Mankind gimmick.
The WCW/ECW incomer was legitimately 6ft 4 inches, but was even taller in his boots. Whilst most of 'Taker's "monster" foes were announced as tall, Mankind wasn't. In fact, the promotion's ring announcers rarely (if ever) mentioned his height at all.
Then, when they did, they downplayed it by knocking off a few inches. That, ladies and gentlemen, is flat out weird and goes against everything fans expect from WWE. Mick had a bit of a chuckle about all of this on his pod, and said: "I’m the only guy to come in being billed as being shorter than he is".
Someone needs to ask a higher-up like Bruce Prichard or Jim Ross about this one.