Mick Foley Explains Why Hell In A Cell '98 Continues to Endure

In a career full of great matches, Mick Foley's epic encounter with The Undertaker at King of the [...]

In a career full of great matches, Mick Foley's epic encounter with The Undertaker at King of the Ring 1998 continues to be the singular match that is most talked about.

The bout was the second-ever WWE Hell In A Cell match, following the inaugural match between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker at In Your House: Badd Blood eight months earlier. While it wasn't Foley's best technical masterpiece of his career, nor was it better than the Michaels/Undertaker encounter, the match continues to live on in WWE lore.

Much of that can be attributed to the fact that Foley took two of the most vicious bumps in his career that have been replayed over and over again. But if you ask Foley, there are some other reasons as well.

He addressed the classic match during a recent interview with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

"Part of it was that it grew on an organic level," Foley explained. "There wasn't social media so it didn't trend for three days and then disappear. It traveled by word of mouth. It was brutal but it was also surreal so that it wasn't difficult to watch in a way like the January 1999 match I had with The Rock was. It stands up to repeated viewings. It doesn't feel like watching a snuff film [laughs]. I sometimes talk at these shows about the element of magic in the air. I think it was alive that night."

As previously mentioned, Foley took two major falls in the bout. The first was the often replayed toss from The Undertaker off of the top of the cage and through the announce table below. The second involved Foley being choke slammed on top of the cage, which broke and sent Foley to the ring below, followed by a chair that knocked out one of his teeth. According to Foley's 1999 autobiography, the cage breaking from that move was unplanned.

Foley admits that even though he went on to later win the WWE's world championship, Hell In A Cell continues to be the moment in his career that he is asked about the most.

"There's nothing that's even close," Foley said. "Running a distant second is my tag team with The Rock. They don't recall specific matches. They just recall the chemistry and how much fun they had watching us."

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