The Night The Igloo Was Set Ablaze: Mankind Vs. Undertaker

This past weekend marked 17 years since Mankind vs. The Undertaker in Hell in a Cell. The following is my recollection of that match:

 

I didn’t watch the WWF’s annual King of The Ring live on June 28th, 1998. I didn’t get to witness the aftermath on Raw Is War the next evening either.  I didn’t have cable. Even worse, Raw was live in Cleveland that night, my home city. Nobody would buy me tickets to go. I was very upset about all of this.

 

On that Tuesday, I got all the details from my buddy of mine that lived down the street from me, who not only watched King of the Ring live on pay per view, but was fortunate enough to go see Raw live at the Gund Arena. Lucky bastard.

 

He kept rambling about how cool it was to see Steve Austin beat Kane in person to regain the WWF Championship, the title that he had lost less than 24 hours earlier at the King of the Ring event in Pittsburgh. But as sweet as that was, he assured me that nothing was cooler than Undertaker and Mankind battling it out in the Hell In A Cell match.

 

I begged him to let me borrow the VHS tape of the PPV, but he told me that he never recorded the events. I look at him lIke he was nuts. Big ppv’s like King of the Ring sold at a price of $29.99. Anytime my grandparents ordered me one, for that price, I always made sure I had a blank tape on hand to capture the event on film to view again and again. He apologized, but described to me the whole match. The blood. The chairs. The thumbtacks. The fall.

 

I had to see it. Unfortunately, I had to wait three months for WWF Home Video to release it. Three months felt like an eternity, but as soon as it came out, I was at Best Buy to purchase it.

 

I wish I could tell you how it felt watching it live, but even watching it twelve weeks after it had been recorded, something felt different about the event. Perhaps it was a mental thing, because I knew of the events that were set to unfold, but I got this instinct that I couldn’t shake. Listening to the crowd, they were rabid throughout the night. When the Cell lowered before the confrontation between Foley and Undertaker, you got the feeling that the crowd sensed something different in the air of Pittsburgh’s famed Igloo that evening.

 

Mankind scaled the cage, and Undertaker followed his lead. I knew what was coming. As soon as it happens, I can feel my eyeballs protruding out of my skull.

 

The fall…

 

Even knowing it’s going to happen, I was still thinking, “No. He’s not going to just toss him off. No…”

 

That’s exactly what occurs, though. After a few shots, The Undertaker grabs Mankind by the collar of his button down shirt, walks him to the edge of the top of the cage, and launches him towards the ground below.

 

After falling sixteen feet (twenty two feet, actually, if you count the distance that he was thrown out) to the ground, Mankind crashed with his arm and back through the announce table below– narrowly escaping cracking his head on the television monitors.

 

“Good God! Good God! They killed him,” screamed Jim Ross on commentary. “…he’s broken in half!” I sat there in awe as they played the fall over and over, while Mankind laid on the floor nearly lifeless. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What if he would have actually died, they didn’t know it at the time, and they just played video footage of a man dying repeatedly?”

 

Doctors, agents, Mick’s long time mentor Terry Funk, and even Vince McMahon himself surrounded the ring, as medical staff put Mankind on a stretcher, ready to cart him off to the local medical facility. The camera switched to a shot of ‘Taker, standing on top of the Cell, gazing around at the crowd as they broke into a deafening “UN-DER-TAK-ER!” chant. Back on commentary, though it had been a much anticipated match, J.R. apologized for the premature ending to the bout.

 

Except it wasn’t over.

 

The crowd panned down the aisle. Pushing his way through the WWF staff, Mankind emerged. The crowd became unglued. Despite it’s incredible realism, I had this moment whwre I thought, “Oh, I guess this was all planned. Maybe he wasn’t that hurt from the fall. But– how could he not be?” I knew the 17,000 plus in The Igloo were thinking the same thing.

 

With his left arm dangling from his shoulder, Mankind began scaling the cage once again.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

I think we know what happens next. Regardless, Come back tomorrow for part two tomorrow!

 

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-Greg