Another case of a retired legend almost butchering his legacy for a run in TNA, “The Hardcore Legend” Mick Foley was still semi-active by the time he arrived in TNA at the end of 2008, but where he ended up in the company is a place he should been nowhere near.

Foley originally arrived as an on-screen authority figure, but much like Flair, Foley would transition himself back into the ring by the spring of 2009. A one-off match wouldn’t have been offensive because, as we’ve already mentioned, Foley could still work a basic match despite his obvious difficulties walking, but that wasn’t enough for TNA. The powers that be thought it would be a good idea to have Foley, who had already put his body through unimaginable pain throughout his career and could barely get around, to beat Sting and become the TNA World Champion.

In the match where he became the TNA World Champion, Foley almost tore his ACL, suffered a massive concussion that he blamed on the six-sided ring for having less give than a four sided ring, and admitted that he wasn’t happy with how the match turned out. All of that was documented in his fourth book, “Countdown To Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal,” a book that also documents how he thought some of the stories in TNA were a little undercooked, and while he did have some praise for the likes of TNA President Dixie Carter, he picked his words carefully enough that he was able to get a legends contract with WWE after he left the company in 2011.

Between 2009 and 2011, Foley would continue to suffer injury after injury, and yet still wanted to soldier on (as was the style at the time) through his feuds with the likes of Abyss, Jeff Jarrett, and Kurt Angle. Had he not put his body through everything that he did in TNA, there would have been a slim chance that Foley would have been able to do the scrapped Hardcore match with Dean Ambrose at the WWE SummerSlam in 2012, and it’s likely he wouldn’t have had to retire as well. Foley was told by his doctors in 2012 that he would never wrestle again, and looking back at some of the spots he took in TNA, maybe a move to the Impact Zone didn’t end up being the smartest move.

Foley still dreams of having one more bloodbath to cap off his career in style, even going as far as to try and lose 100 pounds before his 60th birthday in order to get into ring shape. However, doctors keep telling him to stay retired as one more bump could potentially cripple “The Hardcore Legend.” His run in TNA didn’t prevent him from returning to WWE in a non-wrestling capacity however, becoming the “WWE Raw” General Manager in 2016, but it did prevent him from ending his career in the company he always dreamed of working for when he was growing up.