Mick Foley Says He Was Afraid To Wrestle Kurt Angle In TNA Due To Back Injury, Cardio

While Mick Foley was a legendary and critically acclaimed wrestler throughout his prime, his run in TNA in the mid-late 2000s was physically a rough time for the wrestling legend. Just a few years before wrestling his last match in the 2012 WWE Royal Rumble, Foley had a brief run with the TNA World Championship in 2009, one that had him questioning his abilities and making him fearful to step into the ring with the Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle.

On a recent episode of Foley Is Pod alongside his cohost Conrad Thompson, Foley elaborated on why he was nervous about wrestling Kurt Angle during his run in TNA. "I was scared to wrestle him because of the cardio aspect," Foley admits. "I was having a lot of trouble [wrestling] more than one or two minutes."

Foley then explained how his back injury in 2006 ultimately made the last few years of his career incredibly difficult and has since contributed to a difficult daily life in retirement. So, during his time in TNA, Foley was not wrestling at the level he believed he need to be at to compete against Angle. "You don't pull off a great match with Kurt Angle with just smoke and mirrors... I did not think that I could get through a Kurt Angle match without getting badly exposed."

Foley's TNA run suffered greatly due to his physical limitations and that realization was incredibly hard for the "Hardcore Legend" to cope with. "I was really nervous about stinking the place up... I no longer believed that my strengths could make up for my weaknesses."