Mick Foley Discusses Departing WWE For TNA Wrestling In 2008

During his podcast on AdFreeShows.com, WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley discussed leaving WWE in 2008 and his final conversations with Vince McMahon before he joined IMPACT Wrestling:

“I had my kids with me. This was Nassau Coliseum which is about 30 minutes from my house at the time and they saw the craft table, right? They make a beeline and the craft table at the Coliseum was right in front of Mr. McMahon’s office and he walked out, ‘Mick, I know you don’t like me but I’m asking you to gut this one out’ and I was like, ‘This is not about guts. This is about being treated in a way that I think a human being should be treated’ and so I’d given my notice and… I officially gave notice. I had made it really clear that if that was part of the job, I didn’t want any part of it and Vince, he tried to… this is where I’m hesitant because Vince, you know, he’s — imagine going through a tough time. I tried to text him for his birthday and that’s the WWE number so it’s not working anymore. But I said, ‘Vince, what’s the end game here? If I work hard at this for ten years and I get as good as I can possibly be that you’ll treat me the way you treat J.R.?’ And then he gets about this close, he goes, ‘You think I’ve been bad to him?’ I said, ‘I think you’ve made his life a lot more difficult than it needed to be’ and that was real. It was tense, right? And the next time I talked to Vince was when Barry Bloom had told me, ‘Hey, word has gotten out that Vince knows you’re going to TNA’ and right before I call Vince, John Laurinaitis called me. ‘Hey Mick! It’s Johnny. Just want you to know, no hard feelings, you know? No bridges burned’ and, ‘Thank you Johnny’ and I called up Vince and I really had tears in my eyes. I went downstairs in the basement and I said, ‘Vince, I just want you to know you’re one of the most important men… most important people in my entire life’ and I always told him I consider him to be on the level of Presidents. ‘Oh, I appreciate that Mick’ and then we didn’t talk for another year-and-a-half. But I was off and embarking on a new adventure.

You give all of yourself whether it’s in a relationship or an announcing job and you get spurned, that’s really much more painful than if you don’t present the best side of yourself. So I just remember saying to… one of the producers said, ‘How’s it going?’ I said, ‘This is the least important thing I have ever done in my life.’ It just really felt meaningless.”