411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Mick Foley: Hell in a Cell’

-Welcome to episode one of the 6th season of Dark Side of The Ring. I have been covering this show since season two, which debuted 5 years ago. There is always talk the series is going to run out of things to cover, but the world of wrestling keeps on giving. The episodes have ranged from chilling to heart breaking to even some with levity. Let’s get to it!

-Quick plug for anyone new checking out this recap you can find me on twitter/X @RobertLeightyJr and I am also on BlueSky as well (@robertsleightyjr.bsky.social).

-As has been the case for years now, Chris Jericho is our narrator.

-Teaser shows that Mick Foley will be a talking head, but no Taker which isn’t shocking. Jim Cornette is back as well, which I always appreciate because his knowledge of wrestling is top notch. It looks like Foley’s daughter and wife will be part of this as well. Others include Jim Ross and Al Snow!

-We start with the famous home video of a young Mick Foley jumping off the roof of his friend’s house. Mick says everyone who gets into wrestling is looking for something that they find missing in their own lives. For Mick he mentions he was teased a lot and he had an overwhelming need to be liked. He tells the story of spitting out red food coloring after jumping on concrete and a girl yelled out, “that’s the most disgusting thing I have seen.” That was a reaction Mick knew he could recreate.

-Mick talks about Hell in a Cell being a perfect name for the match. He still gets people telling him that was the match that got them hooked on wrestling. Mickey Foley and Noelle Foley talk about the matches their dad would have with barbed wire, explosives, fire, etc.

-Mick says realism was a big tool and he didn’t think he had a good match unless he had a hard time getting back to his hotel. He didn’t enjoy the pain, but enjoyed the way he could sell it as fun.

-Colette Foley is next, and she is Mick’s wife as we all know. She has been with Mick for 35 years. She first noticed Mick’s eyes and fell in love with him because of his corny jokes and terrible humor. Their wedding song was “Beauty and The Beast,” which is perfect. Song is a BANGER too, though “A Whole New World,” always gets my vote for best Disney song ever. Mick says they were a team and Colette understood his love of pro-wrestling.

-Jim Cornette talks about Mick and his Catcus Jack character. He notes Mick had great charisma and knew the fans liked people that were out of control. He could take people on a ride with him and it made his reputation grow.

-Back to Colette who mentions early in their relationship they had a mattress on the floor with a black and white TV and Mick would play Japanese wrestling tapes on it. Mick says he would watch 12 hours of Japanese wrestling a day. We see video of the death matches in Japan. Mick felt Japan was where he would make his living and that takes us to his feud over there with Terry Funk.

-Cornette notes that Terry became a mentor to Mick and they worked against each other in Death Matches in Japan. Mick says he was drawn to the wild stuff and could make himself stand out. He never saw himself as a WWF guy.

-Al Snow next who notes at the time WWE was not PG, as it was G rating. Al introduces himself as Mick Foley’s best friend and laughs as he says probably his only friend. That’s great! I can see Mick grinding his teeth hearing Al call himself his best friend.

-Jim Ross next and he is the one that went to bat for Mick as far as convincing Vince to bring Mick into the company. JR says they needed dancing partners for the top stars and he had Mick in mind for The Undertaker. Cornette notes they kept throwing giants at Taker and what he needed was someone who was insane. Mick relates the story of Vince relenting but noting he wanted Mick’s face covered.

-Gerald Brisco talks about building up the character and Vince comes up with Mankind. Cornette notes “this bogus bullshit” would not have worked for anyone other than Mick. I loved that early Mankind character that was playing with rats and sitting in dungeons. The different entrance music for when he entered and left was a fantastic touch as well.

-We see highlights of the various Mankind/Taker matches. Foley says they had 7 PPV and 10 TV matches. He notes his character had plateaued and he needed to do something to add to the legacy of his character.

-We get a history of cage matches in the WWF. They had the escape rules by going over the top or through the door. I loved the blue bar cage, but that’s probably nostalgia talking. Cornette pitched the idea to Vince about having a cage with a roof on top.

-The first Hell in a Cell was Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker and it is still the best Cell Match to date. You can find my review of that show here. Foley also calls it the best Cell Match ever. He knew he could not match anything Shawn or Taker were doing. The idea was to run Foley/Taker in the Cell and Mick notes Terry joked that Mick should start on the roof and get thrown off. Foley looked at him and said, “I think I can do that.”

-Mick pitched the idea to Vince and Taker and they both thought he was nuts. We get a voice recording from an older Taker interview where he wanted no parts of throwing Mick off the Cell, but relented. Mick says he was looking at it as a way to just himself above water. Colette told Mick was he was planning and convinced her that he would fine. “If he can see it, he can do it, and I trust that.”

-Cool touch as Mick sits on a couch and is going to watch the match while talking about it.

-Commercials!

-King of The Ring: June 28, 1998: Pittsburgh Civic Arena! No I was not there sadly. I had just turned 17 and had not yet started going to shows on my own. None of my friends wanted to go, so I watched at home with my then girlfriend. The one I famously hit a DDT on a few months earlier and cracked by sternum, which sent me to the hospital. Good times! Oh, my review of that King of the Ring show can be found here! Jimmy Korderas pops up and we know him as a former WWF referee. Gerald Brisco was a producer on the match and was sitting in Gorilla. He is also getting to watch the match and notes he hasn’t seen it in twenty years.

-Jim Ross notes he had no clue what was planned as he liked to be kept in the dark. Foley does as he planned and struggles to get himself up on the roof off The Cell. He lied to Vince that he had been up there. Once up there he became terrified and started things of ways to gracefully climb down. Cornette brings up the top sections of the cage being held together by zip-ties. Their weight caused sections to start to break and zip-ties started to pop off. Mick had the idea to do a suplex, but Taker cut that off as he knew there was a decent chance they would both go crashing through.

-Here we go! The bump we have all seen thousands of times! They get near the edge and Jim Ross looked up and figured no chance he comes off the top as that is too dangerous. He soon realized that something big was going to happen. Cornette notes that the announcers had to see a 300lb man coming at them from 20 feet really fast. Foley goes splat and it’s still something else to see. Just insane! Ross notes it was scary as hell and Al Snow says everyone in the pack were immediately concerned. Al thought Mick was dead. Cornette knew the match was over as there was no way Mick was getting back up.

-Commercials!

-Colette not her two young children were watching and they didn’t know what to think. She told them it was fake, but in the back of her mind she was freaking out. Noelle says if Taker threw him a bit too far or short it could have ended up even worse. Mick says he was in a lot of pain, but the landing could not have gone any better. Cornette mentions he was able to turn and take as good a bump on the table as possible. He notes Hugo bailed out of his seat at the table instead of getting flattened.

-Terry Funk was the first one to get there and then the doctors get there as well. Hey, Dr. Francois Petit is here and he was the WWF doctor for about 13 years. Oh man, he was Sub-Zero in the first Mortal Kombat movie? How did I not know this? Al snows he was great at fixing you, but you may not enjoy it. Francois notes that Mick was his number one patient.

-Mick ends up with a dislocated shoulder. They had to raise The Cell to get the stretcher down to take Mick away. That was legit, but Mick realized the longer he was on the more the crowd was engaged. He had a feeling he could continue even though everyone was telling him to stay down. Cornette: “holy shit, he is going back for more.” Mick isn’t sure how he is getting back up The Cell, but he pledged to do it and it was going to happen. Francois knew something else was going to happen, so he just waited.

-Bump #2: Mick thought the hard part was over. The idea was the chokeslam would cause the mesh to slowly break and Taker would kind of stuff him through it. That didn’t happen and it was this bump that was the scary one. It’s still brutal to watch and Lawler’s, “that’s it. He’s dead,” is one of the greatest calls ever as you feel that he believes it. Colette wasn’t sure how to lie to the kids know and was on the phone calling the company.

-Commercials!

-We see the bump again and man, that ring has no give at all. They cover that the chair followed him down and cracked him in the face. Colette was pissed as she felt Mick had lied to her about the second spot. Mick was legitimately knocked out cold and everyone immediately hit the ring. Petit told everyone that was enough. Taker was scared of what was happening and had Funk check if he was alive. Funk noted, “he’s still breathing.” Funk then bought Mick time by having Taker hit him with a chokeslam. That’s a friend! Cornette says if a match should have been stopped, it was that one, but they didn’t do that back then. Mick confirms and says you just bought time. He remembers coming too and seeing Terry’s shoes in the ring. The clouds began to clear and he wanted to create an image for TV and had the idea to put his tongue through the hole under his lip. Instead we see Foley’s tooth hanging out of his nose. Cornette notes the doctor said Foley’s tooth went into his throat, but he was breathing so heavy it went back up and through his nasal passage and back out the nose. Yuck!

-Taker audio says that all Mick wanted to do was get to the tacks. Al Snow just sighs! Mick says it was the first time tacks were in WWE and he wanted to be the guy to use them. Foley each a chokeslam in the tacks and then it ends with a Tombstone. Still amazing and I don’t care what anyone says, the match deserves 5 stars all day long and that’s the rating I gave it.

-Mick doesn’t want to go out on a stretcher again, so he gets helped to the back. Colette says Mick would always calls her after each PPV to let her know he was okay, and this time there was no immediate call. He finally calls and Colette yells at him and tells him the kids thought he was dead.

-Commercials!

-Al says everyone rushed up to check on Mick as he came through the curtain. Vince McMahon was one of the first there and thanked Mick for everything he did for the company and then told him to never do anything like that again. Mick asked Taker if they used the tacks, while the tacks were still in his body and being removed. Al says he had to help Mick undress and get into bed.

-Mick goes over the injuries: 15 stitches under his lip, lost 2 bottom teeth, bruised kidney, dislocated jaw, dislocated shoulder, and probably a concussion. That match changed the way people felt about him. Six months later he was WWF Champion.

-Colette notes she was worried as the bar kept going up and we see the crazy bumps he was still taking after The Cell Match. JR told Mick it would catch up with him.

-We jump to Royal Rumble and the I Quit Match with The Rock. This may have been even more brutal than the cell match as this was all head trauma. Colette says it was one of the worst days of her life. If you remember her and the kids were in the crowd. The poor kids saw The Rock beat their handcuffed dead repeatedly in the head with a chair. Mick notes he got carried away and told Rock to make sure he laid the shots in and he did. “Instead of five shots, it was eleven.” Again, we are never going to see anything like that ever again in major wrestling and that’s a good thing. Cornette: “he got brain damage for a fucking wrestling angle on television.” We see Colette bawling her eyes out and holding her kids in the front row. Noelle says she has no memories of her dad watching and she thinks she blocked it out due to trauma. “I really hate the I Quit match.” That’s rough man! Poor girl!

-Mick says he understood the style he chose would result in injuries. He chose not to play it safe as it would look bad. He was told he would end up crippled, but Mick thought he still had one good match left in him. We see highlights of the matches with Orton and Edge.

-Mick started forgetting where he lived when he would be out driving. Colette notes he was wrestling at times when he should not have been cleared. He didn’t like what the WWE neurologist said, so booked his own. That neurologist told him he should never wrestle again. Al: “sadly, Mick is paying that price right now.”

-Commercials!

-Next week: Ludwig Borga!

-Al notes they didn’t know the long term affects of concussions back then. He can only imagine the type of pain Mick has to live with now. Noelle brings up CTE and they don’t know how Mick will be doing in 10-20 years. Mick says he worries about that every day. He is going to try to be someone who gets sharper as he gets older and uses the spoke word shows as a way to do mental gymnastics. He wants to appreciate what he has and enjoy life instead of living in fear.

-We go back to Mick saying being authentic was to get the reactions and he wanted to be loved. He says it’s not a fault unless you admit it was also responsible for his success.

-JR says that Mick has done so much in his life, but he will always be known for Hell in a Cell. Mick notes he resented the match for a long time. He embraced the moment when Taker told him that night will long outlive them. That is part of the reason he got into the business was to create moments like that.

-Noelle says that she and her dad were at The Warehouse and came across The Cell. Mick touched the Cell and started crying. It was the first time she saw him cry and I believe WWE has this moment on film somewhere. Mick says he is lucky he is here after that, but says he doesn’t know if he would have done anything different if they did know what they do now about concussions. Mick says he was offered a canvas to do surreal, sublime performance art and on good nights it was the most powerful feeling in the world.

-That was pretty great! We have had a ton of documentaries and videos on Hell in a Cell 98 already, but I like the angle this took where we got to heat the toll it took on not only Mick but his family. Hearing Noelle say she has no memory of her dad wrestling was powerful and you felt for her. This was Mick’s story and he did a great job as always. The rest of the talking heads were all on point and they all felt needed and having something to offer. Definitely worth a watch and a strong start to the season. Thanks for reading!