Mick Foley provided a significant update on his health, noting that he is moving much better after dropping nearly 90 pounds and undergoing major joint replacement surgeries. Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Foley discussed his weight loss and the “game changers” that improved his mobility.
“The crazy thing is I’m moving better. I dropped like 90 [pounds]. At one point, I’d gone from 372 to 273, and then I may have taken it too easy for the next four or five months and crept up towards 300, but I think I’m down around 275, and hip and knee replacements, those were game changers,” Foley said. “I remember talking to Kevin Nash and saying, Kevin, something amazing happened to me today. I said I passed somebody in the airport. I was always the guy where people were like, ‘Hey, sir, you move to the side.’ And I was starting to pass people, which didn’t mean I was fast”.
“The Worst Hip I’ve Ever Seen”
Foley also detailed the severe, constant pain he was in before the surgeries, which he tried to manage in unusual ways.
“I don’t want to over exaggerate the amount of pain I was in, but I think I’ve got a pretty high threshold. So when I say it was, I don’t want to say agonizing, but it was more than severe. If it was not agonizing, it was agonizing at moments,” he said. “I would need five minutes to get going after I got off, I stood up out of my seat on a plane, or when I was driving my car, and my kids said that this is what I would do for hours at a time, I punched my right thigh to try to get some feeling in my nerves.”
He credits a physical therapist friend with correctly diagnosing the issue, which was not his back, but his hip.
“When I went at a friend’s request, who’s a physical therapist, she said, I think that’s your hip. And I was like, but the pains in my lower back. But then she explained something about the piriformis muscle gripping onto the nerve, mimicking sciatica. And when I went to that doctor, orthopedic guy, and I saw the hip, I wasn’t dismayed, I was actually happy, because I saw, you can fix this. He said, ‘I’ve been doing this for 25 years. It’s the worst hip I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how you’re walking.’”
Foley described the surgeries as a “new lease on life.” “Once I realized there was hope, and then once I had the hip followed by the knee, it was like a new lease on life. Now, if you were to suddenly transform someone else into my current body, sure, they might think it was hell on earth, but compared to how I felt for like, 10-15 years, yeah, I am doing a lot better.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can find the show on Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel and all major podcast platforms.
