That Was Then 4.13.07: True Feats Of Manliness - Hell In A Cell '98
Posted by Sam Caplan on 04.13.2007
When Mick Foley decided to do Hell In A Cell with the Undertaker, he knew it was going to be a tough night, but events unfolded in such an unexpected manner that it pushed it way beyond what he originally thought he was getting himself into.
Welcome back to another installment of...TRUE FEATS OF MANLINESS!! The story of Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin was one of two men who fought through terrible injuries to put together an excellent match that was necessary to send the WWF in the direction it needed to go to regain its position as the #1 wrestling company in North America. The story of Randy Savage was one of a man who was willing to go to an insane length to get his storyline with Jake Roberts over by agreeing to let a real king cobra bite him on national TV. However, this week we look at a man who had planned a couple of insane stunts to make for a memorable match, but unplanned accidents turned it into a spectacle in which he took far more punishment than most men have ever taken in the course of a wrestling match. Here is the story of Mick Foley, as Mankind, facing the Undertaker in Hell In A Cell '98.
The Background
The Undertaker and Mankind had literally been enemies from the moment Mankind walked in the door. The Undertaker had rarely lost and even more rarely appeared vulnerable, but Mankind completely shattered the illusion that the Undertaker was indestructible in 1996, making an immediate impact and a huge name for himself in the process. Undertaker was fresh off a victory over Diesel at Wrestlemania 12 and was doing his usual act while waiting for the next big monster to come along so he could chop him down to size. What we got instead was Mankind, who was physically smaller than the Undertaker, yet showed no fear for the Dead Man. This made it all the more incredible when he attacked Undertaker on an episode of Monday Night Raw and beat him senseless. An instant feud was born, and one which most expected Undertaker to win quickly and decisively over the former Cactus Jack. Instead, Mankind defeated Undertaker by making him pass out to the Mandible Claw. They rematched at Summerslam, this time in the first ever Boiler Room Brawl, and again Mankind won when the Undertaker was expected to go over. This win also brought Undertaker's longtime manager Paul Bearer to his side when Bearer turned on Undertaker and cost him the match.
Mankind had done what nobody had ever done, not just in scoring multiple victories over the Deadman, but also by repeatedly leaving him physically and mentally battered. Although Undertaker came back to defeat him in the first Buried Alive match, Mankind had shown that he was more than capable of defeating the Undertaker, and for the first time, fans had an opponent agianst whom the Undertaker wasn't guaranteed a victory. Undertaker followed up Buried Alive with a No-DQ win against Mankind at Survivor Series and then, after winning the WWF Title at Wrestlemania 13, Undertaker made his first PPV title defense against Mankind, and Undertaker won again.
Fast forward to the spring of 1998. Mick Foley had spent much of late 1997 and early 1998 wrestling as Cactus Jack or Dude Love and not Mankind. As Cactus Jack, he had suffered a beating at the hands of Degeneration X while the fans cheered for Steve Austin, who wasn't even there. Foley abandoned the Cactus persona as punishment to the fans and began wrestling as Dude again. Dude Love lost two opportunities to win the WWF Title from Steve Austin and was fired by Vince McMahon as a result. With Dude Love fired and Cactus Jack in a self-imposed exile, Foley had no choice but to revert to being Mankind if he wanted to continue wrestling. He did this and, as his first test he was booked to face his longtime nemesis the Undertaker one more time.
This left Undertaker and Mankind in somewhat of a quandary as this would now be their sixth PPV match against one another in two years, and neither wanted the feud to get stale and cause the fans to lose interest. In order to keep things fresh, it was decided that the match would be a Hell In A Cell match. Undertaker had been in the first Hell In A Cell the previous October against Shawn Michaels, and it was a brutal match that left both men battered and bloodied. With Mick Foley involved, people could only imagine how much worse this one would turn out. Little did they know.
Hell In A Cell
The cage lowered as Mankind approached the ring but, instead of entering the cage as expected, he climbed to the top of the cage and waited for the Undertaker up there. The Undertaker made his entrance and, rather than waiting for Mankind on the floor, followed him up to the top of the cage and they began brawling up there. The cage sagged under the combined 600 pounds between the two men. While Mankind had the advantage of being on top of the cage first, Undertaker fought back and, to the shock of everyone watching, both live and on TV, he threw Mankind off the top of the Cell and through an announce table at ringside.
It was a huge bump to be sure, but not as bad as Foley thought it was going to be. Still, WWF medics came out to check on him and they decided that the match was over. They raised the cage with Undertaker still on top and wheeled a stretcher to ringside, put Foley on it and began to wheel him back up the aisle. A lot of people expected that to be the end, but as they lowered the cage and Undertaker climbed down, everyone was shocked to see Foley get back to his feet, stagger back to the ring and climb back up the cage. The crowd was in awe that Foley had recovered from that insane fall of the cage and was actually climbing back up there. Undertaker seemed surprised as well, but climbed back up to finish off his opponent. The brawl continued, and again the Undertaker took the advantage. The cage was seriously sagging by now, only this time it would give way and would do so in shocking fashion. Undertaker lifted Foley up and gave him a chokeslam but, to the surprise of both men, the cage gave way beneath Foley and he went right through the roof and landed hard in the middle of the ring. The first bump was planned, this one was not.
The fall actually knocked Mick Foley unconscious, and though he would regain consciousness and finish the match, he did not remember anything from that point on even when shown the video. But just then, he was out cold and officials rushed into the ring to check and make sure he was still breathing. He was and amazingly said he was going to finish the match, but was in serious trouble and would need a little time to recover himself. In order to buy him some time, Foley's friend Terry Funk came to the ring and picked a fight with the Undertaker, who beat him up and chokeslammed him right out of his sneakers. By this point, Foley had made it back to his feet, but was out on his feet. Undertaker continued brutally pounding Foley, and at one point knocked him into a sitting position in a corner, and that was when we got the famous shot of a badly bleeding Foley apparently smiling into the camera with a tooh somehow wedged in his nose.
Somehow, Mick Foley recovered enough to turn the tide of the match back and grabbed a bag from under the ring. As if the first two falls weren't bad enough, Foley opened the bag and poured a huge pile of thumbtacks on the mat. A lot of people in the crowd were getting distinctly uncomfortable by this point, but Foley was determined to finish the match as planned. As you might imagine, it was Foley who took the bump onto the thumbtacks, not once but twice. Finally, Undertaker mercifully ended the match with a Tombstone for the win. After the match, the medics and officials immediately rushed back to the side of Mick Foley, but Foley refused to be put back on the stretcher because he didn't want to get carried out of the ring twice in one night and, with help, walked to the back to thunderous applause.
The Aftermath
Foley was still out of it for quite some time when he made it to the back. When he finally came around, he discovered that he had dislocated his shoulder on the first fall, but had continued wrestling regardless. To this day, he still has no idea how the tooth got in his nose. Despite going beyond what any wrestler had ever done in a WWF ring and being badly injured in the process, Foley STILL came out and made his scheduled run-in during the main event between Steve Austin and Kane. Mick Foley has been through some brutal beatings and taken some rough bumps through the course of his career, but this one stands tall above any of the others for several reasons besides just the falls and thumbtacks.
For one, with the amount of punishment he absorbed, anyone else would have listened to the WWF agents when they told him that was it and the match would have ended right then and there. Instead, Foley was determined not only to finish the match, but also to not allow the legacy of his greatest feud be tainted by such a disappointing ending. He also showed how much respect he had for the business because the rule is that you always finish the match unless you're dead, and Foley didn't want to break that code, especially since the match was his idea in the first place. Was it a pretty, fast paced match? Absolutely not, and Foley would be the first one to tell you so, but few men would have been able to continue at all in Foley's condition.
But perhaps most impressively, he started the match as Mankind and ended it as Mick Foley. When the cage lowered, it was Mankind who came to the ring for yet another battle against his toughest foe. But after the first fall, then the second fall, then the thumbtack bumps, the man in the ring morphed from Mankind the demented man-child fighting the Deadman and into Mick Foley putting in a superhuman effort to give the fans what they paid to see despite everything that had been done to him. THAT is why fans respect Mick Foley. It's not because of Mr Socko, it's not because he hangs out with the Rock, and it's not because he's a second-rate author. It's because in his prime, Mick Foley truly lived for the business and gave it everything he had because of his love for the business. At that point, he wasn't doing it because he wanted to put a promising youngster over, he wasn't doing it because he wanted his big Wrestlemania moment, and he wasn't doing it because the writing career he had been counting on had failed. He was just doing it because he was a wrestler who was living his dream.
That's the Mick Foley I want to remember, and not the one who comes to the ring seventy-five pounds overweight just to struggle through a barely passable match for the sake of one big spot.
