Mick Foley spoke on Insight with Chris Van Vliet about his complex relationship with his iconic Hell in a Cell match, admitting he was afraid of many things, including the Cell itself. Foley differentiated between being courageous and being fearless, putting himself in the former category and Shane McMahon in the latter.
“I’m afraid of a lot of things. I maintain Shane McMahon was fearless. You could say I was courageous. Courage is action in the face of fear,” Foley said. “I was terrified of the cell. When I looked down, the entirety of Undertaker’s entrance was spent with me thinking, How do I climb down this thing without ruining my career? I couldn’t think of it, and that’s why the match unfolded the way it did.”
He also noted his general fear of heights. “But yeah, when I drive through the Sierra Nevadas, I get really dizzy. Anything with heights, I can’t look over, even if I’m going up to Lake Arrowhead in the mountains, I can’t look over. I’m really scared. I’m more fearful of many things that people would believe.”
The Legacy of The Cell
Foley explained that while the match wasn’t the end of his career, it provided the defining “moment” that he may not have had otherwise.
“Even though it wasn’t the end of my career, it put an exclamation point, and it gave me the moment… I don’t know if I would have had one of those moments, you know, beating The Rock for the WWE title was a great moment for WWE and for me, but I’m not sure if that would be something that would be passed on to the next generation,” he said. “That’s what stuns me about the cell is that half of the people who talk to me about it… half of the people that talk to me about that match were not born when it took place.”
He shared a story illustrating how the match’s legend has been passed down. “There’s even a story I’ll mention from time to time… it was really powerful when my wife said my kids wanted to watch the Cell match. I said, ‘How do they even know about the Cell match?’ And she said, ‘Well, kids are talking about it in school.’ I said in preschool? But it’s something that parents have handed down, and it’s the go-to for wrestling fans to show their non-fan friends who don’t understand what it’s about.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can find the show on Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel and all major podcast platforms.
