First, WWE announced the return of the Bad Blood pay-per-view, coming to us from Atlanta, Georgia on October 5th. It’s the fourth Bad Blood event, but the first since 2004, when the show was headlined by a Hell In A Cell match between Shawn Michaels and Triple H.
Then, rumors came out that CM Punk and Drew McIntyre would be continuing their feud at Bad Blood, stepping inside of the Hell In A Cell structure themselves to do so. That makes sense. One, it’s one of the most personal and heated rivalries WWE has had in a long time. Two, Bad Blood was known for featuring Hell In A Cell matches. The previous three Bad Blood pay-per-views have all had them… the first edition of the match featuring The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels in 1997, Triple H defending the World Heavyweight Title against Kevin Nash in 2003, and the aforementioned Michaels and Triple H contest in 2004.
That got me in a Hell In A Cell mood, so I started watching some of them, Bad Blood or otherwise.
Eventually, I landed on the most infamous version of the match… The Undertaker vs Mankind from King Of The Ring 1998.
My thoughts on the match have been clear if you’ve read my work in the past. As a spectacle, it is one of the wildest and most memorable things that the sport of professional wrestling has ever given to the world. As an actual match, though, it just wasn’t very good.
If you look at it objectively, there simply wasn’t much to the match at all.
A brief brawl on top of the structure, then Mankind is thrown off of the structure. We get a few minutes where we wonder if Mick Foley’s career has come to an end, and he then shocks us by not only standing back up, but making his way back to the roof of the Cell… where he is almost immediately chokeslammed through the roof, crashing to the mat. Again, we get a few minutes where we wonder if Mick Foley’s career has come to an end, then we see him take a punch that sees him completely crumble to the mat. Taker gets crotched on the top rope during an Old School attempt. Foley gets hit with the steel steps a few times and then takes a few punches to the face. Taker misses a suicide dive through the ropes, hitting the Cell, where he comes up bleeding. Foley grinds Taker’s face against the Cell and then delivers an ugly piledriver (due to only having one fully functioning arm at the time) on a steel chair. Mick then hits a leg drop, with Taker’s head underneath the chair, and then an ugly double-underhook DDT. After Foley pours thumbtacks all over the mat, we get a couple seconds of brawling, then a Mandible Claw is locked in before Taker powers out and dumps Foley onto the tacks… twice. A Tombstone finishes Foley off, and Taker is the winner.
I literally gave you the play-by-play of the entire match in that paragraph.
As I was watching the match again… probably for the 18,000th time since it happened live… I started thinking about how perfectly everything fell into place.
Here’s what I mean…
With Mick’s fall off the side of the Cell, he landed PERFECTLY on the Spanish announce table. Another inch or two to the left or the right, and he lands on the corner of a monitor, and we might not be having this conversation at all because Mick would’ve been paralyzed (or worse) right there on the spot. What if Taker threw him a little harder? Mick either misses the table outright, or he doesn’t catch enough of it to “break” his fall, putting us in another situation where we might not be having this conversation right now. What if Taker didn’t throw him hard enough? Mick either misses the table outright, or he doesn’t catch enough of it to “break” his fall… you get the point.
Not only did he land between the monitors, and in the middle of the table, but he landed in the right spot to allow his momentum to take his body under the guardrail, instead of slamming up against it and causing even more potentially serious damage.
Mick Foley couldn’t have landed in a better fashion if he were a professional stuntman that had practiced the spot again and again beforehand.
Let’s look beyond that spot, though.
The second big spot… Mick’s fall through the roof… is where he took the most physical damage in the match. It was also an incredible stroke of luck, as crazy as that sounds when you consider what happened to him.
Because of the pain his body was in after the first fall, Mick wasn’t able to get the air he wanted to get during the chokeslam on the roof. He fully admits that it probably saved his life, because if he got the air he wanted to get, his body would’ve over rotated, and instead of landing on his back upon impact with the mat, he probably would’ve landed on his head or his neck. At best, that would’ve ended his career in an instant, and at worst, that would’ve ended his life on live pay-per-view.
Think about all of that.
Mick Foley’s in-ring career spanned nearly 26 years. Mark Calaway’s in-ring career spanned over 33 years. In the WWF/WWE alone, they combined for a total of ten World Title reigns, to go with 15 total Tag Team Title reigns, two Hardcore Title reigns, and one Royal Rumble win. They’re both members of the WWE Hall of Fame, are both in the Wrestling Observer Hall Of Fame, and Mick is a member of the Pro Wrestling Hall Of Fame.
They’ve been everywhere, done everything, and seen it all.
No matter what they’ve accomplished, though, you could make the argument that their Hell In A Cell match is what they are best known for. 26-plus years later, they remain in high demand to speak about the match, whether it be at conventions, on their own podcasts, in interviews, or when people see them out in the wild.
With all that said… with everything out of the way… they (Mick, specifically) got as lucky as lucky can be, time and time again, to reach this point. I’ve gone this far in the column, and I didn’t even mention the fact that both men nearly went crashing through the roof of the Cell seconds into the match, as the roof began to give way before we even got to the first major spot.
It just blows my mind to see how close things were, on multiple occasions, to going very, very wrong.
This column was more of a random train of thought than anything thought-provoking or anything along those lines. I do apologize for not really having a “point” here. It was just on my mind, and I wanted to get my thoughts down “on paper,” so that’s exactly what I did.
Did you watch The Undertaker vs Mankind live as it happened? Whether you did or not, what was on your mind as you watched the match for the first time? Is it something that holds up for you, all these years later, allowing for multiple viewings? As always, feel free to hit me up in the comments section below, or on Twitter (@HustleTheSavage), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Now, let’s get back to some sort of normalcy here and move on to my Weekly Power Rankings, followed by closing things out with the list of songs I was listening to as I put this column together.
Weekly Power Rankings
Axiom & Nathan Frazer vs MSK: When the NXT Tag Team Champions step into a ring, fans are about to see magic. The same can be said about the former NXT Tag Team Champions, as well. That means it was no surprise to see this be a ton of fun. Unfortunately, the match itself won’t be remembered because of what took place after it…
Wes Lee: This was easily one of the best turns in NXT history because nobody saw it coming. The Rascalz just reunited, and early word was that they would continue working together, both in NXT and in TNA. Well… we all just assumed “working together” would mean as a team, and not feuding with each other. The turn was so well done, and Lee played his role to perfection. It will be interesting to see if this was the boost he needed, as he has been spinning his wheels, for the most part, since returning from injury.
Kyle Fletcher vs MJF: The outcome was never in question, which is an unfortunate downside to a lot of matches in AEW (and WWE, to a lesser extent) these days. Sure, the quality of the match was really high, but it just showcases the point that far too much of the matchmaking in AEW is taking random people and sending them out there to have a good match for the sake of having a good match.
Trick Williams vs Pete Dunne: I know a lot of people were complaining about the result, worried that Trick is being “buried” after dropping the NXT Championship, but I don’t subscribe to that line of thinking. He’s one of the biggest stars on the NXT roster, and a loss here isn’t going to hurt him. Pete Dunne is one of the best in-ring performers on the planet today, and has been a champion just about everywhere he went, including a 685-day reign as the NXT United Kingdom Champion. If he’s going to be built back up as a major player in NXT, he needs to pick up victories like this one.
Roman Reigns: He made his return to Smackdown and the live crowd welcomed him back with open arms. They went banana pancake for everything he did, and everything he did was completely destroy Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa. Smackdown is viewed as an infinitely bigger deal with Roman in the mix.
Damian Priest: His WWE 24 documentary is another in a very, very, very long line of tremendous docs that the company has produced. I love being able to go behind-the-scenes the way these things take us, and you not only come out of this rooting for Damian Priest, the wrestler, but also rooting for Luis Martinez, the man.
Kevin Owens: “Pro wrestling” and “logic” don’t often go together. Actually, they rarely go together at all. Kevin Owens decided to buck that trend, though. When Cody Rhodes offered him an Undisputed WWE Title shot at the upcoming Bash In Berlin pay-per-view, KO initially turned it down, saying that his win/loss record showed he wasn’t deserving of the shot. Kayfabe or not, that’s a great use of logic, and it shows the character Owens has. I really dig it. For those wondering, Owens hasn’t won a singles in six months, is 0-5 in his last five title matches, and hasn’t been on the winning end of a singles title match since January 24th, 2022… when he won a United States Title match by disqualification. If you’re looking for the last time he truly won a match for a singles title, you have to go all the way back to Battleground on July 23rd, 2017 when he beat AJ Styles for the United States Title. Oh, and he lost the title back to AJ two days later. It has been a long road for the man, but he proved to Smackdown General Manager Nick Aldis that he does “deserve” the shot, so here we go.
Thunder Rosa vs Deonna Purrazzo: Gritty. Brutal. Violent. This was everything pro wrestling fans expect a Bullrope Match to be. Both women worked their asses off and continued their rivalry, which has been pretty cool to watch. It’s tough for women in AEW or WWE to have a truly meaningful feud, or even get relevant television time, unless they’re feuding over a title, but Rosa and Deonna have done just that. Kudos to them.
Bronson Reed: If you’re going to take someone who is pretty cold and heat them up in a single night, this was an impressive way to do so. My math could be off, but I believe Bronson landed 37 consecutive Tsunami splashes on Seth Rollins. It was done so that Rollins could get some time off, as he is still battling the injuries and the pain he was dealing with during WrestleMania season. While it remains to be seen if anything will come of Reed’s attack, it was a great heat-getter for at least one night.
House Of Black vs Juice Robinson & The Gunns: I know some people weren’t fans of the finish, with some saying it made the match “pointless,” but again, I don’t agree. It’ll give us a Triple Threat match for the Trios Titles. We’ve seen things like this before. As a matter of fact, we’ve seen things like this a billion times before. Some heel champion will interfere with a #1 Contender’s match to crown their next challenger, thinking that they won’t have to defend their titles since nobody won the match, only to have the SHOCKING decision made that they’ll have to defend their title against both challengers now.
Bryan Danielson vs Jeff Jarrett: Not all that long ago, Bryan Danielson was somewhat healthy and looking forward to his final run as an active competitor, while Jeff Jarrett had come out of nowhere to become an emotional favorite to win the Owen Hart Cup and earn a World Title shot at All In(nit). Now, we’re finding out that Danielson’s injuries may be worse than we thought, potentially forcing him to retire sooner than we thought, and absolutely nothing was done to capitalize on any momentum that Jarrett built up. Crazy world.
Sheamus vs Ludwig Kaiser: If we’re not going to see Sheamus beat the hell out of (and get the hell beaten out of him by) Gunther or Drew McIntyre, I suppose Ludwig Kaiser is one of the best available alternatives.
Randy Orton: Yes, he’s a Smackdown wrestler competing for Raw’s top title, but at least it makes a lot of sense in this instance. Gunther defeated Orton at King & Queen Of The Ring to earn his title shot at SummerSlam, even though Orton had his shoulder off the mat when the pin was counted. Of course Orton would want revenge, especially when Gunther used that “victory” to become the World Heavyweight Champion. I like the thinking here, and it presents Gunther with one of the biggest possible challenges for him in his first title defense.
Andrade vs Santos Escobar: Good stuff between these two, who showed that they have a lot of in-ring chemistry together. Both men have seemingly been on the verge of a push for a while, and I’m interested to see if Escobar’s win takes him anywhere, or if he’ll just lose to LA Knight and be moved back down the ladder again.
Orange Cassidy & FTR vs Roderick Strong, Rush & The Beast Mortos: It feels like we’ve seen some sort of variation of this match 20 times in the last couple of weeks. They’ve all been good matches, but I think we need to find something else to do.
Swerve Strickland vs Tomohiro Ishii: Another match where there wasn’t a chance in hell for one of the competitors, but the match still ended up being fun. I would, however, like to see a bigger spotlight on Swerve. He became the AEW World Champion, and ever since, it almost feels like he’s not even in the top ten of who FEELS the most important based on pushes, television time, and in-ring work. That’s a shame.
The Bloodline: It was recently announced that Nike will be releasing a Bloodline-themed sneaker at some point in 2025. The Young Bucks have been having a lot of success with their own sneakers, first by Diadora and then by Reebok, but this collaboration with Nike could be insanely big for all involved parties.
Erick Rowan, Dexter Lumis & Joe Gacy vs Chad Gable & The Creed Brothers: I’m pretty sure this is the debut of Rowan in my Weekly Power Rankings, and it’s the in-ring debut for Lumis here, as well. I’m not 100% sure, but I think Gacy showed up here once or twice during his time with NXT. Either way, this was a good in-ring debut for the Wyatt Sicks, and a fantastic tribute to Bray Wyatt in many ways.
Odyssey Jones: He showed up to save Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods from a beatdown at the hands of Karrion Kross and his cronies. On one hand, it’s leading many to believe that the door is closing for Big E’s return to the ring. On the other hand, though, I like that he’s getting a big spotlight for his main roster debut. WWE is still planting seeds for a potential split between Kofi and Woods, though, so we’ll see where everything ends up, I guess.
This Week’s Playlist: “FLY” by Quavo & Lenny Kravitz… “Bright Lights” by The Killers… “Peaceful Place” by Leon Bridges… “Circles” by SAINt JHN… “The Largest” by BigXthaPlug… “Simple” by Kali Uchis… “The Day Of…” by Nightwish… “Oscillator” by Make Them Suffer… “What Remains” by Pop Evil… “Nothing Left (The Fool)” by Fame On Fire… “Guess Who’s Back” by Rakim… “Drivin’ Me Wild” by Common & Lily Allen… “So Far To Go” by Common & D’Angelo… “Big Dawgs” by Hanumankind & Kalmi… “Until We Rich” by Ice Cube & Krayzie Bone… “I Still Believe (Remix)” by Mariah Carey, Krayzie Bone & Da Brat… “Get’chu Twisted” by Krayzie Bone… “Whatchuwando” by Krayzie Bone & The Game… “Dream On” by Aerosmith… “You Give Love A Bad Name” by Bon Jovi… “Livin’ On A Prayer” by Bon Jovi… “Wanted Dead Or Alive” by Bon Jovi… “I’ll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi… “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds… “Return Of The Mack” by Mark Morrison
