Mick Foley Explains Why This WWE Match Is His Favourite

Mick Foley has named his favourite match of his legendary WWE career.

With many iconic moments throughout his time in the ring, Foley has been a part of some of the most significant moments in pro wrestling history. From being thrown off the Hell in a Cell structure to winning the WWF Championship on Raw in 1999, which WCW infamously tried to spoil but the plan backfired, to his many hardcore battles with Terry Funk, Foley has lived up to his legendary moniker.

Although the aforementioned matches along with battles against the likes of Triple H and The Rock are often talked about when it comes to all-time great moments, for Foley, he believes his greatest work took place in 2004.

Challenging Randy Orton for the Intercontinental Championship at Backlash that year, the current and future Hall of Famer went to war in a Hardcore match that saw a barbed wire bat, thumbtacks and just about everything in between. With no help from Evolution, Orton defeated Foley in what was a star-making performance, and the point in Orton’s career where he ascended to the main event scene.

“If He Has A New Favourite, I Don’t Want To Know”: Mick Foley On His WWE Backlash Match

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Foley stated that the Orton match was his number one. The Hardcore Legend admitted that while Orton has had better matches from an in-ring standpoint, the Backlash match was something special:

“My favorite match was Backlash against Randy Orton. Crazy thing is, if he has a new favorite, I don’t want to know about it. He’s technically, probably had better matches. But the idea of being in that spot, people ask me, you will just say you made somebody. No one person makes anybody. It takes a lot of people, a lot of factors, and even if the bases were loaded for Randy, it’s still up to him to knock it out of the park. And he did, and one of the wisest decisions I ever made, much wiser than working at the Huntsville auto show the day before my street fight with Triple H, much wiser than catching a red eye and getting into New York City at 6 am for the Royal Rumble. I did a lot of stupid things that way, as far as travel, I actually canceled a talk at a community college so that I could come in the night before, as opposed to the day of the show. I like people to be able to read between the lines, rather than just spill the [beans].”

Foley also added that unlike previous matches, this was one he had planned out from beginning to end:

“But in this case, I think it’s beneficial to know Randy came up to my room, and for only the second time my entire career, I had an A through Z plan, and I’ll never forget, he was just taking it all in. I’m getting the tingles here, because you’re talking about a moment that changed his career, and I don’t know if we could have had that type of match if I’d gone through that speaking engagement. And the other key factor is that Michael Hayes heard some of the things we want to do. He goes, ‘You’re going to need more time.’ So instead of rushing through, we had time to let things breathe. And it just felt really good. Even though I had many trials and tribulations getting back home. My luggage was delayed for four hours. I did throw up in the parking lot of Tim Hortons in Edmonton, because my brain had jogged a little bit, but I made it back in time for Raw the next night, and it was like the fans looked at him like he was a completely different guy. And it really made me feel good. Now, they turned him babyface in two weeks, which I thought was a big mistake, but it was hard not to like somebody who’d been through that type of ordeal.”