The Hell in A Cell Match From King of the Ring ’98 is Easily One of the Most Important Wrestling Matches of All Time. Mankind (Mick Foley) and Undertaker Ushered in A New Era of Brutality With It, Moving The Line Further Up In Terms of What Was Allowed in the Ring and Which Rules Could Be Broken On Primetime Television. Bear in Mind That Japan Had Already Been Pushing That Envelope For Years With Barbed Wire Matches and Explosive Ring Bouts. Ecw was already up and running, Too. What Mankind And Taker Did was Bring Som of that Extreme Type of Wrestling to the Bigest Stage of Them All: A WWE Pay Per View Event.
It was only fitting that Vice‘s Dark Side of the Ring Opened its Sixth Season with an exploration of This Watershed Moment in Wrestling History, with A Focus on Mick Foley and the Cost of Legacy. Longtime Wrestling Fans Won’t Necessarily Learn Anything New Here, But Foley and Crew Squeeze Event of Emotion out of This Harrowing Reelling of Hell in A Cell. AND IT PAYS OFF.
If you’ve Never Even of this match, The Episode Does A Great Job of Catching You Up With A Bit of The Mankind/Undertaker Feud That the Wwe Cooked Up To Justify the Use of the Cell. Foley Takes Viewers on A Quick But Powerful Journey Through His Hardcore Matches in Japan and How Led To His Jump Back To The United States at A Time When The Wwe Was Looking for Sub Sub Subs Could Measure Up To The Undertaker In A Big Way. The Devil Himself, Vince McMahonShowed Little Interest in Foley Initially Becouse He Didn’t Look Like A Superstar. But that was all change in King of Ring ’98. The WWe Had Already Gone Through Two Previous Hell In A Cell Matches, and Expectations were running high (specially Shawn Michaels and Undertaker Churned out a Classic AT Badd Blood 1997).
The Episode Does to Near Blow-by-Blow Reca of the Match With Foley, His Family, Ex-Wwe Commentator Jrand wwe referees and doctors chiming in to accounts for the one predictability of the match. Everyone added that the Line Between Real and Fake Became Blurred That Night as Foley Received Sub of the Rourthest and Scariest Bumps of His Career. THRUHOUT, Foley Comes Across As SubWhat Regretful of the Risks He Took, But Never To The Point of Questioning His Decision to Go Through With It.
If there’s a Theme That Rons Through This Season’s Opener It’s That of the Highly Unbalanced Risk vs. Reward Mentity That Consumes Ambitious Wrestlers. IT Questions The Price of Becoming One of the Best in the Business. There’s no denying that wrestling asks for a Lot in Exchange for Glory and Immortaly, and Even The there are not Guarantees they’ll be attained. You Can Be a Great Wrestler, But Never Quito Reach Greatness Because You Were Short of That One Explosive Match That Cements Your Place In Sports Entertainment History.
Foley Had That Match in Hell in A Cell, But the Episode Makes It Painfully Clear That He is now paying for it in his post-wrestling days. What the Cost of that looks like is exploring well and it paints a Vry Tragic and Werrying Picture of What Awaks Foley Should His Concussions Catch Up To Him Sooner Rather Than Later. In Fact, They Already Have In Several Ways.
Episode 1 of the latest season of Dark Side of the Ring Is Perhaps The Series’ Most personal yet. There’s a Sadness Coursing Through It Given The Damage Foley Has Essentially Inflicted on Himself for Our Viewing Pleasure. But it is impossible to separate that from the fact it is found of the must of the history of the industry. Commitment to What Foley Himself Refers to As “Fantasy Combat” You Never Looked The Way It Did In That Cell. LEAVE UNDERKER WINNING THE MATCH, MANKIND EMERGED TO NEWLY MINTED LEGEND IN THE EYES OF WWE FANS AT THAT REQUIRE MOMENT. I went Through Hell to Achieve That. Unfortunately, it looks like Hell Kept More of Him Than He Had Barganed for.
