Mick Foley recently talked about a wide range of topics on his Foley is Pod, available via AdFreeShows,
During it, Foley recalled where he got the idea to do the ‘Hangman’ spot that eventually ripped his ear off in Germany in 1994:
“As far as the Hangman, I had taken note of it the first time in a magazine where Exotic Adrian Street and Randy Savage, and it was Randy who did the Hangman. I never saw Randy do the Hangman one single time in WWE or WWF. But it was a photo of the Hangman,” Foley said.
“Then it was the movie, ‘I Like to Hurt People.’ There were a lot of wrestlers in it. It told the story about a guy who had been decapitated using the Hangman. Then I saw Don Muraco do it in a really creative way as a count out. So he was counted outside the ring.”
“Back then with the VCR, you pause and frame by frame it. You have to make it look like it’s part of your natural motion. You have to, in flying motion, use your body’s momentum and that bottom arm to twist that second rope over that top rope and now you’re hanging. I was doing this as far back as ‘86 because it was one of those things that I could do that required timing and momentum, not pure athletic skill.”
“Prior to Germany, I had been stitched up on late night hospital visits about four times for that same move, and I’ve probably been patched up another five or six times backstage.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription