Jim Ross On Whether He Heard of Mick Foley’s Plan to Go On Top of Hell in a Cell at King of the Ring ’98

– Jim Ross discussed the infamous Mick Foley vs. Undertaker Hell in a Cell match on the latest Grilling JR, and whether he knew about the plan to go atop the cage ahead of time. The match from the 1998 King of the Ring is one of the most famous of all-time, and saw Foley climb to the top of the cell as the match began. Foley got thrown off the cage by Taker through the announcer’s desk, then crawled off a stretcher and climbed back up only to be choke-slammed through it. Ross recalled hearing word of something about the top of the cage, but dismissed it as nonsense at the time.

“I thought it was just an absurd rumor and locker room talk,” he said. “Cause it was unbelievable that someone would even consider doing something like that. It was unprecedented. There was no way to do it safely. There was no way to execute that maneuver and do it safely. Now somebody, some smart**s out there listening might say, ‘Well, they could have had a, could have broken his fall with some kind of padding, or whatever.’ Yeah, a lot of things could have. He could have been in a harness or something too, I don’t know. It’s silly.”

He added, “You’d never want to put the talent in a position where, it’s not simply a fact of there being no margin for error. There’s gonna be error! You can’t do this and not hurt somebody. And the other issue is that we already had Austin with a bad elbow, bad wheels, neck. We got Taker with bone spurs, his foot’s all problematic. God dang, man, we didn’t need to lose anymore people. So I heard the idea casually-discussed along these lines. ‘Hey JR, did you hear what Mick’s latest idea is?’ I said, ‘I’m afraid to ask.’ ‘Well, he’s thinking about doing something on top of the cage.’ So I didn’t know how that was going to end or whatever, I just thought, ‘Well…’ I tried to figure out in my mind, how could he do that and not kill himself? Or at least be hurt, and be off of work for a while? And maybe for a long while. So I just blew it off. I didn’t think anymore about it, I thought it was that absurd, it’s not gonna ever happen. So, when it happened, I almost took a dump in my tuxedo.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Grilling JR with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.