TJR Review: Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions with Mick Foley on Peacock/WWE Network

I watched the Steve Austin “Broken Skull Sessions” interview with the great Mick Foley. It premiered on Sunday on Peacock/WWE Network and it is available on-demand now. I wasn’t planning on writing about it as a formal review or anything like that, but here I am with my own website, so I might as well write some thoughts on it.

It was a great discussion between two friends that are around the same age with similar career paths from WCW to ECW to all-time greats in WWE. Mick Foley is a guy that has told stories about his career as much as anybody in history since he wrote multiple great books, did comedy tours all around the world and so many interviews. A lot of this stuff might not be new to some of us, but it’s still good to watch Mick talk about this with Steve, who had a similar journey as Mick in a lot of ways.

They talked about Mick’s early days in wrestling and then getting to WCW when Austin was there too. That led to stories about Foley traveling with Austin where they did practical jokes on Diamond Dallas Page. Foley also talked about his feud with Vader, which was great. That also led to the story about Mick losing his ear in a match in Germany. Austin told the story from his perspective that guys were watching backstage and saw the blood. They wanted to go out there to check on Mick, but he kept on working.

Foley told the story about how he got into WWE thanks to Jim Ross pushing it on Vince McMahon repeatedly. Foley said Vince only agreed after Vince said that they were going to put a mask on him. That led to the development of Mankind and Mick talking about how he was shocked that he got to beat The Undertaker at King of the Ring 1996 and SummerSlam 1996. Mick thinks that The Undertaker saw a lot in him since Undertaker knew he needed some better opponents than what he used to, so Mick was a guy that Undertaker liked working with.

I liked the discussion about the Dude Love debut as Steve Austin’s tag team partner in 1997. They laughed a lot while watching those clips. When they talked about the Austin/Dude feud in 1998 they laughed a lot about some of the spots and how much the fans were into it. Austin called it Backlash 1998, but it was Unforgiven 1998 and then they talked over clips of Over the Edge from May 1998. I just love watching legends like this reminiscing about these moments.

Of course, there was a lengthy discussion about King of the Ring 1998 with Mick’s legendary Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker. Mick said that it meant a lot to him when Undertaker told him that match is still going to be talked about long after they are gone and he’s right about that. I’ve heard Mick talk about it a lot, so having Austin join in and ask the right questions added to it a lot as well. There was a cool photo of Austin backstage with Foley prior to Austin’s match that night and Austin was making sure that Foley was able to do the run-in that he was supposed to do later in the show.

They talked about Mick’s first WWE Title win in January 1999 (taped on the Tuesday prior to that) and the crowd was going crazy as Foley beat The Rock thanks to Austin knocking Rock out with a steel chair. It was such a big moment in Mick’s career and we all know WCW tried to spoil it on their show, but it didn’t work in terms of the television ratings.

The best part of the whole thing may have been when they reminisced about the hospital scenes with Vince McMahon in late 1998. That was the debut of Mr. Socko as well. Classic moments with Foley telling Austin about Mr. Socko while they were waiting in a small bathroom. It’s just funny seeing these guys discussing that stuff.

There were also stories about Mick Foley deciding to return as a full-timer in early 2000. Mick said that part of the reason why he decided to do the two matches with Triple H (Royal Rumble 2000 and No Way Out 2000) is because Austin was out of action for a full year with a neck injury, so Mick knew he needed to be at his best for those matches with Hunter. They were two of the best matches of Mick’s career.

They also spoke about Mick’s two best matches after retirement when he put over Randy Orton at Backlash 2004 and the WrestleMania 22 classic in 2006 against Edge. Both matches were amazing and showed that Mick had no problem putting over younger talent that deserved it.

The last few minutes featured a quick discussion about Mick’s TNA run that he enjoyed at the start, but then he lost faith in the company. Mick’s Hall of Fame discussion was covered and he thought it might have been the best Hall of Fame class ever.

They covered a lot. I didn’t hit on everything because there was so much, but I figured I would write something to let you know how much I enjoyed it. The show lasted 1 hour 55 minutes, so give yourself time to get through it all. I think it was one of the better interviews so far.

Here are some of the clips from Austin’s discussion with Foley.