March 6, 2000 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: WWF No Way Out review, Mick Foley retires, more

Unlike most other wrestlers of similar fame, to do a career retrospective on Mick Foley is best saved for an examination probably years down the road.

He was the classic overachiever, who defied all the odds, and was possibly the single greatest influence inside the ring on styles changing in the business of the past ten years. In a career destined, because he wasn’t that great athletically and didn’t have what was believed to be the right look and physique, for being mid-card for life, he ended up when his career came to a close, as one of the five biggest stars in North America, and even as a best-selling author. In the end, he went out, with the glory but without the storyline ego, putting over the world champion twice on PPV in his own specialty matches, and even in a tag match on television and in every angle over the final weeks of his career. Hunter Hearst Helmsley long since earned his spot as the top heel in the industry today, but if he is remembered some day as one the top heels in history, he owes a lot of it to the credibility Foley gave him these last two months. In many ways, from hard work, to unselfishness about making others look good, to being a student of the game and probably truly loving pro wrestling more than nearly anyone else, enough to give his body, and perhaps parts of his brain, to it willingly and happily, whether big money was involved or not, and not for the selfish glory of bragging about scars in the bar to get over to nobody, but more to satisfy his own vision of what he wanted his role in something greater to him, this business, to be, he should be admired like few if any wrestlers of our generation.

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