You can listen to Mick’s comments about his current health, his undiagnosed concussions and more starting at the 14:42 minute mark in the embedded audio player below. Some of his comments have been transcribed below it:
On whether he regrets any of the crazier things he did during his career that contributed to his body being beat up now:
MF: It’s a tough question to answer. It reminds me of what I said to Punk when I saw him all wrapped up after a house show. I said, “Man, you don’t have to go like that every night at a house show.” He said, “If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be here.” It was that work ethic that got him there. It’s easy to look back and say, “Man, I shouldn’t have done that.” Or, “I wouldn’t have done that.” You pretty much wrestled every match like it was the most important match of your life when you’re on the independents. It didn’t matter if there were twenty six people in Polka, WV when I wrestled Shane Douglas. It was going to be the best match we could possibly do. That work ethic got me and the word around. That opened doors for me everywhere I went. One thing I regret is that when my knees started really hurting and I still felt like I needed to put on a real physical show. That’s… I took too many shots to the head. We didn’t know the science at the time. I kind of bought in to the theory that I was indestructible. That didn’t turn out to be the case. I certainly should have recognized symptoms from concussions. Especially in those later years. Especially when I wrote down the words. When I did Countdown to Lockdown. When I wrote down the words, “It takes less and less to hurt me more and more for longer and longer.” As soon as I wrote them I said, “Alright. I’m done.” I had admitted that I can’t do what I used to. It takes longer. Within another year there was that definite research out there that talked about how dangerous that was. Once you start getting hurt more often with less. It used to be that when I got hurt I could look back at the video and say, “Ok, that’s where it happened. That’s where it happened.” Then on that one night where I got my bell rung three times I was like, “Ok. Oh, they must have missed the camera angle. It didn’t look as bad as it felt.” I should have realized, “Your day is done.” I think every wrestler is guilty of maybe staying a little too long. I definitely stayed probably two years longer than I should have. I regret those two years. I’ve said at times, “Yeah, I shouldn’t have been dropping elbows in front of 150 people on spot shows.” But thats’s kind of… if you had taken that out and you took out every logical step. The truth is, and I think I’ve written this before, if you catered only to people who weighed in with accurate risk reward ratios and analysis you wouldn’t have a business. It’s not a business that draws logical people thinking about odds of success.
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