Mick Foley Says He Had To Talk Vince Into Letting Him Go Off The Top Of The Cell Against Taker In ’98

Mick Foley's infamous Hell in a Cell against the Undertaker in the 1998 edition of King of the Ring still resonates in the hearts and minds of wrestling fans everywhere, and Foley reveals that it was tough getting Vince McMahon to green light certain spots. 

Foley talked with Chris Jericho on Jericho's "Talk is Jericho" podcast and said he had to sell Vince on the match's most famous spot, Foley being thrown off the top of the Hell in a Cell structure onto the announce desk.

“I told a couple of the biggest lies of my life that day.” Foley recalled, “I said, ‘hey, what if I came off the top?’ and Vince [replied], ‘absolutely not.’ And I went into sell mode and I said, ‘well, if I was going to drop an elbow off there and somebody’s going to move, you’d probably let me do that, right?’. It’s leading questions and he goes, ‘I guess.’ ‘Well, it’s the same thing. I’m in total control.'”

On the subject of arguably the match's second most famous spot, Foley being chokeslammed by Undertaker through the structure after Foley climbed atop of it a second time, that spot was supposed to be different on paper than the final product. 

“People have speculated that I knew the cage was going to break the second time," Foley said. "And the truth is, that’s way too dangerous! To go into the cage from a chokeslam like that is… Yeah, yeah, it was supposed to tear. It was going to tear a little bit. And then, Taker was going to stuff me through the hole. The big visual to me was I was going to be hanging upside down. Like my arms and flailing and this. And the bump itself, ‘alright, I just have to be able to rotate, land on my hands and knees, maybe we’ll risk your wrist, your knee, but nothing real major.’ And I got approval for that."

Foley said Vince came up to him once the show was done and was thankful for what he had achieved while saying that Vince didn't want him to do that ever again.

“Vince came up to me after the show and he said, and I do remember this, he said, ‘you have no idea how much I appreciate what you’ve just done for this company, but I never want to see anything like that again,'" Foley said. "And I think that’s pretty telling. Vince, I think, gets a bad rap for… I honestly believe I would be in far worse shape if a) I’d been allowed to do what I wanted to do and b) and he hadn’t said that day, ‘I’m going to place a governor on you.'”

You can listen to the entire podcast at this link.