WWE King of the Ring 1998

During his Hell in a Cell match with The Undertaker, Mick Foley, wrestling under his Mankind moniker, performed what remains the defining act of hardcore wrestling in the history of the business. Sure, since that day there have been other acts performed, in or around a wrestling ring with a higher degree of risk. There have undoubtedly been moments where an individual has fallen from higher platforms and there have been hundreds of wrestling matches with bloodier visuals than that of Foley at the end of this one. In truth, there were even matches before the 1998 King of the Ring that, it could be argued, were ‘more’ hardcore than this. What ensures that this match stands out from the crowd, however, is the stage on which he did it, the moment in which it came and the way in which it was performed. Here Mankind takes a flying fall off of the roof of the Cell, another crash through it and then a double portion of drawing pins (or thumb tacks, as they are called in the US) to his back, all in front of a mainstream pay-per-view audience much more used to the brightly coloured hair metal wrestling of the 1980’s and early 90’s, than to the dark, grunge based fare that had been saved for regional US promotions and niche Japanese groups up to this point. Not only that, but he did it at a moment when pro wrestling was on the crest of a wave, and just entering a 2-year period of peak popularity.

WCW Fall Brawl 1998

During the height of the Monday Night War there was a Wild West feel to professional wrestling that is hard to fully explain to anybody who wasn’t watching at the time. Each week in 1998 in particular, both WWE and WCW were pushing themselves further, crossing new boundaries and in general, doing anything they could to gain an advantage in the ratings battle that would define the era. In order to stem the flow of WCW’s runaway success at the beginning of the year, WWE had brought in Mike Tyson, at an extremely high price, to help solidify Steve Austin as the next major crossover star in the sport. In response, WCW had split the epoch making NWO into two separate, warring factions and created myriad new possibilities for future matches and rivalries. WWE in turn had broken new ground in violence with the infamous Hell in a Cell match between Undertaker and Mankind at King of the Ring 1998, while WCW had happened upon Bill Goldberg and ran with this new surprise mega star by putting the World Title on him despite legitimate questions existing as to his suitability for the role, having debuted less than 12 months before that faithful night in the Georgia Dome.