Felix Upton on January 4, 2023
WWE programming is tightly scripted, but there are always exceptions. Back when Vince McMahon was calling all the shots, it was never a good idea to go against what he wanted. That is exactly what Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley did, and it paid off.
During a recent episode of his Foley Is Pod podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer remembered his time as RAW General Manger alongside Stephanie McMahon. He wasn’t too comfortable with memorized promos, crediting his many brain injuries for his bad memory, so he wanted to write some of those
“When I finally started to get on track with the GM role, it’s where I realized “okay, I’m in a different atmosphere. I have to play by the rules, I don’t get to write the rules anymore.” But instead of me trying to memorize someone else’s verbiage, which is really difficult for me with the head injuries, I would write out promos. Even if they only took a few lines, it felt like they were mine.”
“Going back to, this is fall of 2016, I think. So I’ve just taken over this role of General Manager for RAW with Stephanie as the Commissioner and my boss. No one has mentioned anything about the fact that Triple H interfered with the match, costing … I can’t remember what title. I thought, we have to have some kind of friction here or else I’m just in a corner in my second week on the job. It’s me against her.”
Despite Vince McMahon edict that his scripts need to be followed, Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley did a segment their way. When Vince McMahon seemed like he was going to disagree, he gave the scene a watch and decided that their way was acceptable.
“I got maybe ten percent of what I wanted out of Vince. Then Stephanie and I went and cut the promo our own way. It was a lot of tension. We are overriding Vince’s edict. We cut the promo. He sees us cutting the promo, he goes “what the hell is going on here?” Stephanie goes “dad, Mick and I did this just to see what happened. We’d like you to take a look at it.” And it was about a three minute segment. He looked at it after, seemed like an eternity, nodded his head and went, “we’ll do it your way.” As soon as he turned the corner, we hugged. We were just so happy that we had stood up for ourselves.”
We’ll have to see if Mick Foley makes his way back to WWE television. Odds are, if that happens, he won’t be given too many written lines to memorize, because he seems just fine coming up with his own words.
What’s your take on written promos? Sound off in the comments!
January 4, 2023 9:43 am
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