Thursday, January 17, 2013

Straight Shootin' with Mick Foley

The Good
Mick Foley delivers nearly four hours on his career from approximately 2000 to 2005. They talk about his time as WWF Commissioner, his feud with Randy Orton, his thoughts on Ric Flair and his novel writing experiences. His reflections on the importance of the feud and in particular his Hardcore match with Randy Orton and how crucial it was to getting the rising star over are interesting. Gabe Sapolsky repeatedly brings up the WWE writers, which Foley never buries out-right (as it seems the ROH booker wants him to), but he does give some critical and thoughtful comments on their role and how that refocusing has negatively impacting the WWE. The highlight of this, not surprisingly, is Mick Foley's thoughts on Ric Flair. He famously blasted Flair's poor booking in WCW, but Flair gave him an unfair, uneducated and unflattering (to Flair) receipt in "To Be the Man." Flair's name comes up again and again, but they save the heavy stuff for the finale. Gabe reads Flair's passage about Foley and the man himself rebuts it pretty handily. He reveals flawed research, flawed logic and ultimately gets his point across that Ric Flair is not a very reflective person. A burial of another talent that is different than you'll hear in any other shoot.

The Bad
If you take that Flair part out, this was a long and, at many times, boring interview. Foley goes on the assumption that you can remember much of the minutia in his matches, angles and such, which I can understand…but I couldn't remember a lot of those details. When I first listened to this, perhaps, but five or so years later this interview seems to be so limited in scope and dated in content. This is often a case in the latter part of a shoot interview, but this issue was constant. I can also imagine many would find much of this to be dull except for the Flair highspot. I probably would have given this four-stars or better when it happened, but this simply does not stand up very well.

The Rating: 
***1/2