[1995-05-23-ECW-TV] Interview: Cactus Jack

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Cactus does a tremendous promo talking about growing up and why he's the way he is. He also mentions the Flair "no one cares about you/you'll end up in a wheelchair at 30" story without mentioning Flair's name. Now, he's one week away from his birthday and he's not there yet. Must-see.

[Tim Evans]

Great promo by Foley. I thought he was talking about Ole but Flair makes sense.

[PeteF3]

Cactus tells a story of neighborhood kids robbing his home run balls, and his father's advice to "take it to right field" instead. But that's too easy for Cactus Jack, just like his style of wrestling. Foley tells the story of the locker room in Columbus when Ric Flair informed him that he'd be in a wheelchair by the time he was 30 and no one was going to care. Now he's a week away from his 30th birthday, with a wife and kids--and there are a lot of people hoping to be correct about his fate. With one week to go, Cactus could go in, dance around the ring, and sail into retirement having proven everybody wrong.

 

But that would be like taking the ball to right field.

 

I didn't mean to practically transcribe the promo, and I don't mean to make this post all melodramatic and '90s smark fan-like, but it's an amazing and intensely personal piece of work. A shoot promo in the absolute greatest sense of the term. We know now that Cactus really would have been better off taking it easier and retiring sooner, but at this time he was a symbol for all that the Big Two was not, but at the same time all that it *could* have been if they wanted. Much of Foley's influence on wrestling was not positive, but I think we're all better for the fact that eventually the WWF and WCW followed his lead. Not just in terms of being "extreme" but in terms of bringing out raw emotions like this--that part more than the chairs, dives, and thumbtacks is Foley's best legacy. (That, and bringing about a sea change in terms of wrestling literature still being felt today.)