[Mikey]

Both combatants in this showdown escaped the second round with little effort, Y2J fending off Jake the Snake and Mick dealing with ECW icon Raven. The two grappler turned authors square off here for the right to advance to the regional final. Can the Man of 1004 Holds slap an armbar on Mick Foley’s run to the Final Four? Or will Mrs. Foley’s baby boy crack the code and send Jericho back into VH-1 hell?





Poll closes Sunday night at midnight eastern, pending my sleepiness.

[Moreofabreadguyanyway]

I loved Jericho, but I'd probably take Foley over anyone other than the Rock.

[Riot Act]

Jericho. He's just as, if not more entertaining on the stick and he doesn't even deserve to be compared to Foley in the ring (although the latter is just my preference in styles).

[Lucky]

Jericho's good and amusing on the mic when he's not resorting to the cliches and catchphrases. But I've never seen him do emotion and passion like Foley.

[National Champion Chris Cole]

Give me Jericho in a close call.

[Fire-Babe]

I really *need* that picture of Jericho in the first post....

[The Jewish Cunthead]

Foley... because he still managed to have great success while getting his promos ripped off by MooseheadJack.

[The Canadian Content]

Jericho -- no hesitation.

[Moosehead Jack]

I like Jericho, but Foley entertained me more, so Foley gets the vote

[Mikey]

I put my foot on a speaker at my high school graduation and yelled "Come On Baby" to the crowd as I walked across the stage to get my diploma.

Jericho EASILY gets my vote here.

[salmonjunkie]

Like Jericho. Love Foley. Foley's promos were always way better than Jericho's.

I mean, why is "WILL YOU PLEASE, SHUT THE HELL UP?" a catchphrase? It was even on a T-shirt, for fuck's sake.

I'm surprised that "Bottomfeeding trashbag two dollar whore" or whatever the fuck he called Steph every week for 6 months didn't get on a t-shirt.

I do like Jericho, he had great moments, his winning of the Undisputed Title was awesome coming out of nowhere (I got to see it live!), pretty much everything he did as a heel in WCW was awesome, and his WWF debut was super-awesome (for various reasons) but he could get really really repetitive.

Foley, on the other hand, was at one time my favorite wrestler in the industry. And his promos in ECW as Cactus Jack as well as in WWE in all of his incarnations of Mankind rocked the world. His world title victory was awesome, and came out of nowhere (even though stupid Tony Schiavone spoiled it for me - it was still awesome). BANG BANG!

[The Jewish Cunthead]

tarheelmike said:

I put my foot on a speaker at my high school graduation and yelled "Come On Baby" to the crowd as I walked across the stage to get my diploma.

I hope this is true Mikey... I need more details.

[Mikey]

fsolomon75 said:

I hope this is true Mikey... I need more details.

It is. Complete with the bicep flex. Got one of the biggest pops of the night. Ah, to be young and stupid again.

[The Jewish Cunthead]

Well young anyway...

[murgen]

Foley gets my vote in a tough decision.

[jmagee]

You know, I love both of these guys. In fact, after Foley left, Jericho was one of the only reason I continued to watch. Still I gotta go Foley here. I've never seen a promo with more emotion than the promo he gave right before his "retirement" HiaC match. My god. I still remember it now.

[firebreakerchip]

I love Jericho and he is easily my favorite all time wrestler save for Savage. Jericho is the first heel I really truly hated and boy did I want Deano Machino to crush him at every turn. Of course as I got older, I realized Jericho for what he was. Between reading his book (which proves why he is the paragon of virtue for the entire free world) and re-watching '98 work on Youtube has re-affirmed my admiration for Jericho. I will admit he has his uninspired moments in the ring, but when motivated he can absolutely go.

I like Foley, but I was never a huge fan. His ECW promos were absolutely amazing, but I never found one of his WWE promos to hit the same level. I won't go so far as to call him a glorified stuntman or a garbage wrestler, but his style is something I just don't care for. His matches with the right people (i.e. Michaels and Sting) are awesome, but for the most part I am underwhelmed.

[Lucky]

Jericho however is responsible for "Save_Us" the transparent "code" that wasn't actually a code. That told you to break it when it wasn't there. He then boasted that it was genius because he totally outsmarted us. Despite the fact that the only way he was capable of outsmarting us was by lying to us and telling us there was something there that wasn't. And that us having even 1% of doubt that it was him was why it worked despite the fact that it was impossible for us to be 100% sure it was him without being on the booking team.

And thus Jericho is responsible for what has become the avatar for my hatred of WWE's lazy bullshit and arrogance in basically arguing that even flops are successes because they say they are.

I would have voted Foley over him anyway. But I would have had to think about it if it wasn't for that bullshit. It even overcame Foley's recent laziness.

[Angle]

Foley's great but I've gotta go with Jericho on this one.

[gooker]

I'm gonna help Jericho claw his way back into this. I like both guys as everyone else does, but I've been with Jericho since I saw him in a 4-way match for the ECW T.V. Title in 1996. I thought he seemed like a cool dude, then I saw where he debuted in WCW and I've followed him ever since, from being a lame babyface in WCW to an awesome fucking heel (I even brought a Jerichoholics Anonymous sign to a Monday Nitro back in the day).

Then again I was probably aware of who Cactus Jack was even before I knew who Jericho was. I just have more of a connection with Y2J.

I will say that both guys, as with pretty much everything else in wrestling, bore me at the current time.

[Chris Eco]

It seems that it always happens this way in tournaments for me-->My two favorites go up against each other sometime before the final round. (Well, I guess if we had Angle v. Steven Richards, I'd feel the same way.)

Anyway, Jericho is a much better wrestler than Foley, but Foley has pretty good match psychology which has helped him carry some less than quality stars. Of the promo work I've seen from both guys, Jericho made me laugh more, but he's also bored me more than Foley.

Oh wait. I forgot about the Jerichotron 5000. Ehhhhhh....Jericho.

[Batman]

Damn it. It looked like Foley had this one well in hand, so I decided to hold off on major campaigning until he really needed it. Major miscalculation. To save time I'm just going to post one of my favorite old columns about why Foley is so awesome:


When We Were Marks
For Want of a Fork
by Llakor

It sometimes happens, very rarely, that a wrestler's entire career can be analyzed through the prism of one indelible image. A moment, captured like a moth under glass, frozen like a mammoth in a glacier, that resonates down through the ages, revealing not a wrestler's move-set; not his finisher; not his gimmick; not his angle, but his character. "A man’s character is his fate", says Heraclitus. If we can just glimpse the character of a wrestler, we can understand his matches, his career, his life, more deeply than we could by any study of his moves, his results, his titles.

Take as an example, Stone Cold Steve Austin's blood-streaked face at Wrestlemania XIII. Austin struggles to remain conscious, undone by his adversary's technical superiority. Yet, even caged in Bret Hart's sharpshooter, Austin remains, to the last, defiant. There is no question that Austin is in a great deal of pain, but it is his attitude to that pain that is the key to understanding Austin's character. He will not be overcome by this pain; it will not be his master; he refuses to surrender to it. In his defiance, he seems to declare that this pain is temporary, that it can be endured. What cannot be endured is becoming a victim; succumbing to the pain; yielding to it; surrendering to it. The pain of Bret Hart's sharpshooter is temporary, but submitting to it; losing to Bret; being defeated by the pain, that would be a permanent shame that Austin could not endure. Bret is able to defeat Stone Cold Steve Austin's skill; he is even able to vanquish Austin's body, but Bret is never able to defeat Stone Cold Steve Austin's mind. In the end, Austin's mind, his ego, triumphs over the frailties of even his own body.

Which is not to say that every minute, every move of every match of Austin's career can be explained by this one isolated incident. Merely, that the key to his character can be found in it, and once you understand Austin's character, all of his matches, even to a certain extent all of his moves make sense in the greater context of his character. Austin's success is built on the fundamental refusal of his ego to be restrained by the bounds of his skill and the limitations of his strength.

As a further example, consider Austin's heel run when he began to realize that his skill and strength, even assisted by his enormous ego, were no longer enough to achieve victory. His ego refused to relinquish the (W)WWF championship belt that he had suffered so much to possess. One has only to to see Austin gazing in desperate madness at his title belt before his singles match with Chris Benoit, to recognize that same desperate refusal to yield that marked his match with Bret Hart. The difference, the distinction is that this time Austin's defiance is clouded by fear. For perhaps the first time in his career, Austin fears that his ego alone will not be able to overcome the weaknesses of his skill, the frailties of his body.

Similarly, another wrestler whose character can be summarized by one unforgettable image is Mick Foley, Dude Love, Cactus Jack, Mankind. The moment in time in question, the picture frozen on the mind's eye of thousands of true wrestling aficionados, comes during the Mind Games PPV: Mankind's match against Shawn Michaels for the (W)WWF Title. Here for the first time in Shawn Michaels' title reign, the Heartbreak Kid was confronted by an opponent that he did not know how to beat. Shawn Michaels' strengths in the ring were his speed, his skill and his ability to absorb damage, but in Mankind he had an opponent who could neutralize all his advantages. Mankind was not fast, but he was fast enough to neutralize Shawn Michaels' speed; he was not Bret Hart, but he was skilled enough to cancel out Shawn Michaels' skill; and, most importantly, Mankind was able to both dish out and absorb enough damage to give even a human rubber ball like Shawn Michaels cause to pause.

An argument could be made that Mankind was destined to win this match. He appeared in total control until, in a very innocent sequence, Shawn Michaels suplexed Mankind on the outside, in the process jamming Mankind's leg on the steel steps. Just that quickly, the match turned on a dime, becoming a psychological confrontation with HBK targetting Mankind's wounded leg. As the late Mr. Perfect points out in the commentary of the match, attacking a wounded opponent in this way is a side of Shawn Michaels that we had not seen to this point in his championship reign. It is a sign of Shawn Michaels' inability to deal with Mankind's challenge that he leaps on this opportunity so quickly and with so much ferocity. It's also worth pointing out how well laid out the match is. The psychology of Mankind's leg injury is introduced so naturally, almost accidentally, that Shawn Michaels' reaction to the injury appears to be a desperate improvisation rather than a planned story. This heightens the suspension of disbelief essential for a great wrestling match. In addition, because of the way that the injury is introduced to the match, a (W)WWF audience unfamiliar with this kind of match story-telling is dragged into the drama of the match.

Paralyzed by Shawn Michaels' increasingly vicious attack on his injured leg, Mankind finally flattens Shawn Michaels, giving him enough breathing room to try and restore circulation to his increasingly numb legs. Rolling out of the ring, Mankind begs for help from his manager Paul Bearer and grabs from Uncle Paul an instrument of last resort: a fork with which he begins stabbing his leg to restore some feeling to his battered leg.

Exactly what does this tell us about Mankind and about Mick Foley? First, we understand that Mick Foley is prepared to sacrifice to achieve his goals. If he must harm himself in order to beat his opponent, win the match, gain the (W)WWF title, then so be it. The Snuka Splash from the top of his garage and later from the top of a cage, the Cactus Elbow, the Hangman, even the Hell in the Cell can all be seen as logical extensions of Mick Foley stabbing his own leg with a fork in order to win a match. His teeth, his ear, his leg, Mick is prepared to sacrifice them all.

Next, it demonstrates Mick Foley's commitment to his craft, his passion for his art. He is willing to inflict harm on himself in order to tell a better story in the ring. All wrestlers are committed to doing this to a certain extent, but most wrestler's have a boundary, a threshold, beyond which they will not go. Surely, the act of publicly stabbing yourself with a fork establishes that for Mick Foley, these boundaries are expanded if not completely ignored?

Certainly, it is no accident that the back cover of Mick Foley's first book, "Have A Nice Day" lists the injuries that Mick has incurred in the ring. Nor is it a coincidence that this is a deliberate echo of an earlier poster for Jackie Chan. (For Rumble in the Bronx, if memory serves.) In both cases, the implication is clear. Jackie's poster and Mick's back cover both proclaim: "You may consider me a clown, but I consider what I do to be a story-telling art-form. In the pursuit of that art, and in the conquest of your disbelief, I am prepared to go to almost any lengths, regardless of the personal cost to me or my body." To put it another way, Mick isn't stabbing his leg for the sake of stabbing his leg. He is doing it to further the story of the match.

In the end, Mick Foley stabbing his own leg with a fork, tells us one critical fact: Mick Foley REMEMBERS. Here is Mick Foley, totally unrecognizeable from his old Cactus Jack character, his trademark smile and his disfigured ear concealed beneath a leather mask. When he brandishes a fork, the unmistakeable symbol of his old tag-team partner Abdullah the Butcher, Mick Foley is calling out to his old tag-team partner. In the process, Mick is making a commitment to his older fans never to forget his own history. This reverence for memory informs the rest of Mick's career in the (W)WWF and to a certain extent predicts his later memoir.

Looking at Mick Foley's legacy, we must recognize Mick's sacrifice, his art and his memory. It is the combination of these three factors that led to his greatest matches. His sacrifice; his willingness to put his body on the line, his art; his ability to tell a story in the ring, and his memory; his capacity to remember and make others remember. All of those elements of Mick’s character are contained in that one moment at Mind Games where he stabs his own leg with a fork to give himself a better chance to beat Shawn Michaels, win the match and become the next (W)WWF champion. That this was, on this night, a doomed quest, just shows the depth of Mick Foley’s character, the unlimited boundaries of his sacrifice, the genius of his art, and the depths of his memory.

[creepy]

I'm not reading all of that. I nom'ed Jericho, but I think I might vote Foley. Ehhhh, always marked for Cactus.

[Batman]

Man, I just have to say:

FUCK!

I can't believe how not-close this is. Dammit!

[The Jewish Cunthead]

I know... I'm glad we got 31 votes but I thought it would have been closer than 18-13.