WWE icon Mick Foley has relived the day he was thrown off the top of a hell in a cell by the Undertaker.
At the King of the Ring Pay-Per-View in 1998, Foley and Undertaker participated in a match that changed the course of wrestling history forever, with the image of Foley falling threw the announcer’s table living on in WWE folklore.
“I could just go with the exaggerated version of 30 feet, 40 feet, but it was a legit 16 feet,” he told This Is Your Sporting Life, thanks to Tobin Brothers – celebrating lives.
“It doesn’t sound that high until you realise, that’s six feet taller than a basketball rim.
“I was being thrown and we had no idea how that was going to end up.
“While I was laying there, my upper body was covered with the debris of the table that just about imploded.
“Today we have very eye catching, futuristic looking, visually striking barricades in WWE. They look great compared to the steel bicycle racks that surrounded the ring when I was there.
“If we had those cool, visually striking futuristic looking barricades, I would have been contained within the ringside area and we would have lost that surreal image of half my body being out in the arena.
“My upper half was there with this debris over me, and the lower half into the audience.
“Fans lost their minds. We wanted to do something that no one had ever seen before.”
Foley also explained how he convinced Undertaker and WWE boss Vince McMahon to allow the incident to happen.
“I did a great job of sounding far more confident than I actually was,” he said.
“I had completely forgotten the conversations I had with the Undertaker leading up to that match.
“I only discovered them through the homework process which included reading my own book again.
“I saw that every day for about two weeks, I would tell him I wanted to start the match on top of the cell.
“Every day he would tell me, in no uncertain terms, that was not going to happen under his watch.
“Finally he came up to me, concerned, not as a character, as a human being, and he just said, ‘Jack, why are you so intent on killing yourself?’
“I said, listen we have got a history, we got a legacy, we have had five Pay-Per-Views, all of them were good, a few of them were great.
“We not only went up and down the United States and across the country, we went around the world.
“I said, the character is flat right now, I don’t want to do anything that will hurt our legacy. I want to do something that will live up to that.
“Maybe, if we can start the match in a way nobody has ever seen, and do something that no one has ever done, maybe we can fool people into thinking we are having a great match, even if we’re not.
“He thought it over and said, I’ll think about it.
“When I arrived in Pittsburg, Mr McMahon was there, I guess he had been apprised of my intentions, he asked me if I had been up on top of the cell that afternoon.
“I assured him I had, which to that point in my life was the biggest lie I had ever told.
“Then he said, he wanted to know if I was completely comfortable up there.
“Then I eclipsed that previous biggest lie by telling him I was.
“We got through it and my first thought when I hit the table was, hey at least the worst part of my night is over.”
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