Since becoming the new General Manager of Raw, Mick Foley has of course been on WWE television most weeks throughout the second half of 2016. In recent weeks, however, an increasingly shrinking Foley and Commissioner-or-whatever Stephanie McMahon have been on TV less and less, with Foley pretty much focused on a storyline where he is so angry at Sami Zayn about wanting to fight Braun Strowman that he lost his teeth at one point.
During Sunday night’s post-ROADBLOCK: THE ROAD IS OUT AHEAD edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that Foley will be taking some time off in 2017 to have hip replacement surgery, which is pretty serious business, obviously.
“The called Foley back in [for Roadblock] when he was supposed to have the weekend off. He’s supposed to be at TV [on Monday] now, even this was supposed to be his week off. So the deal with Mick is that he’s in tremendous pain, even [after] dropping all this weight, just from all those [in-]ring injuries. It was bound to catch up, and … I believe he’s 51 now, so it’s catching up.
“He needs hip replacement surgery, which he’s going to get relatively soon. I don’t know the date, but … I’m thinking it’s early 2017. So he’s going to come back [after that]. But one of the reasons he’s looking for time off — some of it is Christmas, but it’s just really difficult for him right now to do all this travel. It hurts [him] a lot, so he asked for time off, they gave him time off, then they called him [for Roadblock]. He was doing a charity appearance in the Pittsburgh area anyway, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t going [to be nearby] anyway.”
Foley recently celebrated losing 100 pounds on social media, and it now appears part of the impetus for that weight loss was to try and alleviate pain and prepare for potential surgery. It’s clear to a lot of fans that Foley has been having trouble getting around for some time now, so we all hope that the hip replacement will help him out and he’ll get back into top form. Perhaps on the Jan. 2 episode of Raw, he’ll address his time off, but it’s also possible they’ll just silently take him off television until he’s ready to come back.
Who will yell at Sami Zayn now? Kevin Owens, probably. It’s usually Kevin Owens.
