Twenty Years Ago On This Very Day, The Undertaker Threw Mankind Off The Hell In A Cell
“Good God almighty! Good God almighty! That killed him! As God is my witness, he is broken in half!”
By many, those few words are considered to be the greatest commentary call in professional wrestling history. Paired with the visual of Mick Foley’s – or in this case – Mankind’s body plummeting through the air, falling sixteen feet down and crashing through one of the commentary tables set up ringside (which provided little-to-no cushion at all, might I add, leaving Foley’s being to splat onto the concrete floor like a wad of Silly Putty), and The Undertaker’s unnerving glare down at the crime scene left below him, this moment could undoubtably be considered one of the greatest moments in professional wrestling history, as well as one of the most pivotal and influential moments in the history of the business.
Foley claims he told “some of the biggest lies of his life” on June 28th, 1998. His Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker always had a big spot planned, but it certainly wasn’t the one we all know and love now. Originally, Taker was going to chokeslam Mankind on top of the cage, tearing one of the top panels just enough off its hinges for him to slip through, hang upside down by his feet, arms flailing for a bit, and then he’d fall down into the ring shortly afterward to complete the match. Terry Funk suggested, though, half-joking, in a conversation about how Foley and Taker could never outdo Michaels and Taker’s first Hell in a Cell match, that Foley should start the match on top of the structure and be thrown off of it onto the floor.
Being the daredevil he is, Foley responded, “I think I could do that”, and took the idea to Vince McMahon who shot it down immediately. This is when what Foley describes as the “sell job” began. Foley started to ask if he’d be allowed to drop an elbow off the cage, or take various other bumps where he’d have full control over his body, and Vince slowly but surely started to think about it and change his tone about the stunt. After both he and The Undertaker let Mick know of the potential consequences and risk he would be taking, and Foley still had the urge to jump, it seems there was almost an unspoken agreement that he would be allowed to go through with the bump.
Mankind entered the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh first, scaling the sixteen foot cell instead of entering it, and The Undertaker followed shortly afterward. It was just the two of them up there now, with a loose steel chair lying around, and with every step – let alone BUMP – they’d take, the chain-link would be pressed down so far it almost looked like they were fighting on a waterbed. Eventually, it came time for the toss, and history was made.
That’s not where this story ends, however.
Terry Funk, Vince McMahon, and the WWE’s medical staff made their way out to the ring, lifting Foley’s body from the pile of debris it was laying in onto a stretcher, and that was that. There was simply no way Foley – now sporting a badly dislocated shoulder – could finish this match after taking the grandest fall anyone had ever seen a wrestler take. That’s what they thought, at least, foolishly, because this is Mick fucking Foley we’re talking about. He got up from the stretcher, pushed all doctors to the side, and started a second climb to the top of the cage. The Undertaker, opposite him, did the same (Fun fact: he had a broken foot this whole time), and the brawl ensued. The chokeslam spot I previously mentioned was attempted, and well, you could say it didn’t go as planned…
The panel gave way completely, not partially, sending Foley through the cage and into the ring, ONTO the steel chair that was with them up top at the start of the match. The Undertaker, Terry Funk, and many others have come out after the fact and said that they truly and honestly thought that Foley was dead after this. Mick himself has said that the only reason he WASN’T killed in that moment was because he didn’t take the chokeslam properly. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he went unconscious, though, as medics once again rushed to his aid and were once again shoved away. The ‘Mankind’ mask was off at this point and a camera shot of Foley laid out against one of the ring’s lower turnbuckles revealed one of his teeth lodged in his nose. The Undertaker never broke character in this whole ordeal, but he gave Mick a bit of time to come-to by chokeslamming Terry Funk out of his shoes and antagonizing other personnel there making sure Mick was alive, before finishing the match off by hitting one final chokeslam on Foley (this time onto a pile of thumbtacks), and finishing him off with a signature Tombstone Piledriver.
Both men later interfered in the main event of the show, a largely forgotten piece of history from that night, and McMahon famously told Foley, “You have no idea how much I appreciate what you have just done for this company, but I never want to see anything like that again.”
Foley’s bump that night raised the bar for extreme moments in wrestling like nothing before or after it, and there are still wrestlers trying to replicate or upstage the spot to this day because of just how much it captured the imagination of a generation. For my money, nothing has ever done that, or even really come close, because while heights may have been raised and crashes may have been harder, the ceiling was shattered on that night, June 28th, 1998, in one small step for man, and one giant leap for Mankind.