As part of the hype of the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view, The Undertaker gave a rare interview to WWE.com. He spoke with them about the 20th anniversary of the infamous cell match with Mick Foley in 1998. The video (see below) also includes interviews with Foley, Jim Ross, referee Tim White, and Sgt. Slaughter and includes some never-before-told stories on the match.
“Honestly, I did not expect him to get up from that,” The Undertaker said. Foley continued the match and Taker thought to himself “that’s one tough son of a gun right there.”
Foley remembers thinking that his feud with The Undertaker ended months earlier so the cell match at King Of The Ring 1998 felt cold as they went into it.
Taker said he had a fracture in his ankle at that time so they had to get around that. Foley remembers lying to Vince McMahon and saying that he had been on top of the structure before and he was comfortable.
Taker remembered, “To be completely honest, I was like ‘crap, am I gonna be able to get up there?’ The answer was yes because I would have got up there. I don’t care how but I would have got up there. It was definitely an exciting way to start out a Hell in a Cell match, to start out on top.”
Taker said that he remembers the sound of the wire breaking for the pressure of their weight.
Jim Ross did not know that Foley was going to fall off the cage. “Everything you heard me say was spontaneous and real,” Ross said.
Referee Tim White said he almost had a heart attack when he saw Foley crash through the table. He remembers that they had to raise the cell with The Undertaker on top in order for them to move Foley away from the ringside area.
“That could have been catastrophic,” Taker said about the chokeslam through the cage. “I stepped off of the panel and onto the support bars. If I hadn’t had done that, we would have both gone through that together. So if you could imagine, if I had stayed on that panel, my weight would have probably been on him too. And then what happens? It’s a scary thought.”
Taker remembers punching Foley and then saw something in his nose. It turned out that it was one of his teeth. “Mick had basically just had two very bad car accidents and still had the fortitude to get back to his feet and say we’re gonna finish this.”
Taker said that the thumbtack spots were probably the easiest part of the night. “It was definitely icing on the cake for him. He ended up in a bed of tacks. It was a rough night for Mick Foley.”
After the match, Foley remembers telling referee Mike Chioda that he can’t be seen on the stretcher for the second time. So, he decided that he would walk to the back with assistance from WWE officials.
Foley said, “Mr. McMahon sat me down and I remember those words specifically. He said ‘you have no idea how much I appreciate what you’ve done for this company but I never want to see anything like that again.'”
You can check out the entire video below:
