Image via WWE
5. The Undertaker vs Mankind – King of the Ring 1998
No matter how many Hell In A Cell matches end up taking place throughout WWE history, the matchup between Mick Foley’s Mankind character and The Undertaker at King of the Ring in 1998 will always be the most popular. And there’s certainly plenty of reasons for that.
At this point, there had been only a single one-on-one Hell In A Cell match (more on that later) so Mankind and ‘Taker wanted to make this a sight to see and they accomplished that pretty quickly. The match didn’t even start in the ring as The Undertaker followed Foley up to the top of the structure, and within just a few minutes, in perhaps the most breathtaking spot in wrestling history, Mankind was hurled off the top of the cell onto the announce table at ringside. And let’s be honest here: Jim Ross’ call made the spot that much better with his legendary call. But even after nearly 20 years, this is hard to watch knowing what could have happened.
However, what’s even more uncomfortable is that, despite being thrown off the top of the cage, Foley decided to continue and climbed back up, which led to the second big spot of the match. Now, while the first big spot was completely planned, the second one when Foley fell through the cage onto the mat was not and it honestly could have killed him. But Foley being Foley, he once again decided to continue and actually got a little bit of offense in before being thrown onto the bag of tacks that he himself had brought into the ring. Throw in a Tombstone at the end and the match was mercifully over.
Foley became a wrestling god because of this match and he certainly deserves it. With that being said, it actually wasn’t much of a match as opposed to being a nice highlight reel. That’s why it’s only ranked here at number five.