Mick Foley sees a lot of Cactus Jack in Darby Allin, and thinks Allin has done to his influences exactly what Foley once did to his own.
Speaking to Adam Barnard for The Sportster, Foley was asked about Allin taking inspiration from the character that made his name.
“I see Darby as someone who took the inspiration from Cactus Jack and added a whole lot of athleticism to it. He did things that I could have never done, and he’s created a hybrid style that borrows from me a little bit and from others who are far more athletic than me, and he’s made it his own in the same way that I basically took one part Bruiser Brody, one part Tommy Billington, and made it my own. He’s created a hybrid style that works for him and has made him one of the biggest stars of this new generation.”
The two names Foley cites are the Dynamite Kid, whose real name was Tommy Billington, and Bruiser Brody. They sat at opposite ends of the business, one a small, fast technician who influenced a generation of junior heavyweights, the other a wild brawler who worked most of his career on his own terms. Cactus Jack came out of the space between them.
Foley wrestled as Cactus Jack from the late eighties in WCW, ECW and Japan before the Mankind and Dude Love characters took him to the top of WWF. He is a three-time WWE Champion and a WWE Hall of Famer.
Allin has been with AEW since its launch in 2019 and is a two-time TNT Champion. He became the first professional wrestler to reach the summit of Mount Everest in May last year, having trained for it around a full-time schedule, and returned to television that summer. He later became World Champion before losing it MJF.
