Mick Foley: Lack of social media helped build aura around Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker

Conversations listing the most famous matches in WWE history rarely last long before the Hell in a Cell between The Undertaker and Mankind at the 1998 King of the Ring is mentioned. But according to Mankind, or Mick Foley, that wouldn’t have been the case if the match had happened in more modern times.

While it was a brutal match from start to finish, two spots in particular stand out. One is of Foley being thrown off the cage, crashing through the Spanish announce table. The other is of Foley being slammed through the top of the cage and landing hard on the ring below. While the first spot largely went off as planned, the second one did not, as Foley’s fall was supposed to be more gradual.

In a conversation with D-Von Dudley, shared on Dudley’s YouTube channel (and transcribed by Robert DeFelice of Fightful.com), Foley stated his view that if the infamous match had happened in the era of social media, its fame would have been largely limited to the few days after the event.

“No one saw this one coming, right? Nobody saw it coming,” Foley said. “I think for a few years after this, there was a sense that people were trying to top this, but you could tell that they’re trying to top it. Whereas this was, not only was it completely unexpected, but it grew organically in fans’ minds. There was no social media at that time. I think if it had been on social media, it would have been a big deal for three or four days and then been largely forgotten. So I was lucky that people talked about it.”

Social media, and the overall increased presence of the internet over the last 27 years, has made things easier to see and relive. But to Foley’s point, being able to see something — like Foley’s crash landings from the top of Hell in a Cell — at a moment’s notice does contribute to burnout of it. The more often people see something, especially in a short period of time, the more likely they are to get bored and move on to the next thing.

So, Foley has a point. It’s certainly true that younger wrestlers can use social media to their benefit in a way that Foley and other stars of yesteryear couldn’t. But when it comes to building mystique from a match or moments in it, it’s hard to dispute what Foley is saying.