Original subtitles

There isn't anything in the world I would have rather have done in that

than go to war with Mick Foley.

I knew that this was going to be one of the biggest

matches of his career. I guess what I didn't realize at the time was he might

have had maybe an ulterior motive.

Maybe.

Literally, I thought to myself, I could lose an eye.

But think of the pop.

What if the floor doesn't give?

What if it does give? What if it gives in a place it's not supposed to give?

know, all of that is going through my mind as I'm watching these two human

beings on top of Hell in a Cell.

Hard to put into words how much those two matches meant on solidifying Triple

as a main event player.

Take a good look at the future of the World Wrestling Federation.

There's a new meaning of perfect, and it's Triple H, Hunter,

Hurst, Helmsley.

As the attitude era was coming into full steam, everything was so competitive.

This was at a moment in time for me when I was trying to become the anti to what

The Rock and Austin were becoming.

That's where I felt like my place was in the business, and I felt the need and

wanted to be that.

Coming from the things I'd done in the past and the fun aspect of DX, I needed

that serious side of it to come out.

I always use the term marquee guy.

Top guy is one thing. A lot of top guys.

Somebody was to say, oh, hey, WWE's in town. Oh, who's wrestling?

So -and -so. Oh, really? Who's he fighting?

Marquee guys are different.

Hey, WWE's in town. Who's wrestling? Rock. Ooh, I want to go. There's a few

that hit marquee status.

And I think that if you want to say that for Triple H, then this was the moment

that got me there.

This is about me. I don't need to be in a clique anymore.

I don't need to be in DX anymore.

This is about me. It's about me reaching my goals. The game stemmed from an

interview where the character felt that it was so invested in the business and

it was such a connected part of his life that it literally was him. That there

was nothing else more to it than he was the entire business.

What, you want me to shoot with this interview? I'm gonna... Shoot with it.

going to tell you how I feel, whether you like it or not.

I felt that this was me saying that this entire industry should be mine because

it was me and because everything about me was invested in being that. Every

I look at you guys, it makes me sick to think what you did to me, holding me

back. To hell with The Rock, to hell with Austin, to hell with The

own all their asses. That was a pre -taped interview, so it was shot

with multiple cameras.

And when I said the line, it was all done in one piece. But when I said the

line, I am the game, J .R.

It just came out that way. The passion of it, it came out in that manner. And

when we got to the end of the take, I remember thinking, we're going to do

again because of that. They had a camera angle where you didn't necessarily, I

believe, see my mouth saying it. And they were OK with beeping it out and

it made it even more powerful because it was real in that moment.

You guys talk about being students of the game.

I am the game, J .R.

There is nobody that eats, sleeps or breathes this business more than me.

I don't know that it wasn't until the next week. I

just can distinctly remember walking out on that stage, seeing the signs and

thinking to myself.

Well, I just hit something gold.

I was an account executive in the New York sales office. I was helping to sell

our media and sponsorship business, really at a very entry level. I was

out of college. And I also at that time became a character on our television

show. And it involves Stephanie.

I'd just like to add, you know, I've known the Undertaker, too.

And it's like Dad said, you know, I guess I just never really did know him.

it's interesting working with Steph when we did all the stuff around the

wedding. Hey, get a nice shot of the brand new Mr.

and Mrs.

Hutterhurst Helmholtz.

And. You know, my breaking up the marriage with her test.

I know that you can only have one question on your mind, dad.

Oh my God.

I hate you.

And that is. I hate you.

Not did we, but how many times did we consummate the marriage?

And then the match with Vince.

She was.

So enamored with every aspect of the business. Talk about student of the

right? Her passion for it was infectious.

We always wear a lot of different hats here at WWE to listen in on Vince

McMahon's creative sessions and to listen to him brainstorm with top talent

to hear their ideas and concepts and why something works and why it doesn't

work. And, you know, to really have the benefit of being under the learning tree

with Triple H.

And to have him teaching me and giving me the time to really explain why he's

doing certain things at the time that he's doing it. Because it's all

It's all designed to get a reaction.

I guess what I didn't realize at the time was he might have had maybe an

ulterior motive.

Maybe.

I think that the Steph relationship storyline.

into the Foley matches.

If I had to pick like one time frame in my life to say this is the moment that

the big shift happened, it's that beginning of 2000.

I have to say there is nobody more giving of their body and what they're

to do for our business than Mick.

He does it for our audience. He does it for our fans.

Because he wants to over -deliver for them in every way he possibly can.

Kill them!

Oh, my God!

They're falling!

Mick is one of the most unique characters and performers that I've ever

the ring with because he is so skilled and gifted at all the different bits and

pieces of our business.

He would do things that you would think, how does a human being survive that and

make you, oh, my God, that is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I got to

more about this guy. Right after he did that, five minutes later, he's got Mr.

Sacco on or he's doing some straight up comedy act.

Before the game, when I was still Hunter Hearst Helmsley and he was mankind and

we were.

Shifting through things and finding our way, I felt like we always just had this

chemistry right off the bat. Together, he and I can create some magical things,

and the characters kind of gelled off of each other really well. I loved

everything that we ever did together pretty much was, I felt like, always

worked.

I had written some pretty large checks, and my body was cashing them in

all at the same time.

I was having trouble getting around. I didn't want to be seen doing less than I

was capable of, and it just seemed like if I could ride off on a majestic steed

into the sunset.

that it would be the perfect time to retire.

Keep in mind, I was one of the biggest stars in the company.

I had a book out that had been number one on the New York Times list, was

hanging in there on the list, and it hung in for 26 weeks. So I was at my

as far as being an attraction for WWE, and Mr. McMahon was willing to let me go

for the sake of my health.

And then the wild card was Stone Cold Steve Austin's neck injury.

Will you come back if you can't be as good as you were before?

No, there ain't no way but 100 % for me. 100 miles an hour, either you do it or

you don't. That's it. And if I come back and everything goes right, you're damn

right. Stone Cold Steve Austin being dangerous, son.

Because when Steve went down with that injury, there was a sense that we all

to pull together for the good of the team because we were without our number

attraction.

We knew that Rock was going to be a part of the WrestleMania main event, but we

almost had to create a new top -tier star.

Mr. McMahon had a meeting with me and with Hunter, asked us what we thought

about the possibility of working together to kind of fill in that gap.

And we were all for it. We'd had a history of really working well together,

creating some amazing things, going back to 1997.

Here he comes! Where is he?

Catch this jack!

He's back!

Somebody snipe me! I thought he was dead! He's alive!

It may be the darkest day of your life, because it's Madison Square Garden and

Mrs. Foley's little boy!

Bye -bye!

Bye -bye!

Foley had these unique characters, and I'd worked with most of them, and it's

funny, I helped pull a lot of them out.

Triple H needed someone to prove that he could hang and be a badass. He'd

already proven himself as a main event commodity as part of D -Generation X.

I guess there was just that little question mark. Can he hang at the top of

roster when it comes to singles competitions and be a certifiable top

draw?

There is a thought out there that Triple H needed me to get him to that next

level but I needed him.

I did not want to go out.

as the guy with the sock. Years later, I've come to accept that I was the guy

with the sock. And I love the fact that I was the guy with the sock. But I'm

looking at the very end of my career, and I want to go down swinging.

Like, I want to go down doing the things that I loved watching when I was a huge

WWE fan. I wanted to be that guy I had been five years earlier.

I believe that I was able to turn Cactus Jack into a WWE superstar.

It was Triple H who made him a part of wrestling mythology.

When I stepped into that shower and I let the cold water run down on my head

I looked down at the blood as it swirled around that shower drain, I started

thinking a little bit about what mankind was.

One thing mankind is not.

is ready to face you in a street fight at the Royal Rumble in Madison Square

Garden.

But I think the WWF fans deserve a substitute in that match.

A substitute?

He's chickening out? What I'm going to do, Triple H, is I'm going to name him

right now. As a matter of fact, I think you know the guy.

So the reveal comes quickly, and this is a moment that still induces goosebumps.

20 years after the fact, there will be people who put it up there as the best

thing I've ever done, and I can't disagree with them, because if Triple H

out a dismissive laugh and tells a story with his face, you're the same guy in a

different T -shirt.

This match is dead in the water. It goes nowhere.

And instead, he reacts as if he's literally seen a ghost.

It's one of the most effective ways of advancing a character.

For those who remember Cactus Jack, he's coming back stronger and better than

ever. And for those who have no clue who this Cactus Jack guy is, we know he's

somebody, and we know he's somebody Triple H does not want to tangle with.

built up this aura around that character. It was the ultimate sadistic

destroyer. Mick Foley is more vicious, more dangerous than ever, King!

And I get in that ring and I'm literally moving faster than I've moved in years.

I remember literally going back and looking through the video to see if it

been sped up because I can't believe I'm moving that fast.

Triple H is there and he's taking a beating and I'm hitting him with

I can on each one. And he's just, he's bringing it out of me. Now I've got to

catch my breath because I have not moved that fast in years.

There's two things responsible for that. There's the adrenaline rush that comes

with the audience there.

And there's Triple H bringing out the very best in me. So when people try to

judge the value of a performer or a worker or a wrestler, you know, there

the move sets. There's all these different things that you can tangibly

But one of the intangibles is, can you bring out the best in your opponent? Can

you make that opponent better than he ever felt he could be? And that's, you

know, the difference between being a superstar and a legend.

So at the Royal Rumble, you're going to make me bleed.

I've got some news for you.

It will not be the first time.

And it sure as hell will not be the last because I've got an awful lot of blood

to give.

I will take what you hold dearest, your cherished WWF championship belt.

I will take it.

and it will be mine, mine, all mine, baby!

Madison Square Garden, it's where everyone aspired to be. I mean, the

quote ever can be attributed to Mr. McMahon's father, Vince McMahon Sr., and

simply said, Vinny, the garden will always be the garden.

Madison Square Garden, and this ain't Mrs.

Foley's baby boy.

I think both for Mick and I to know that we were going into the garden, getting

the opportunity to main event the Royal Rumble, a lot of pressure, but we were

hell -bent on delivering. We knew we were going to deliver. We knew we were

about to make something special.

I remember

I walked Triple H out in the entranceway, and he kissed me.

That was the first time he had ever actually kissed me on the lips, and it

kind of took me back because I knew it was in character, but was it really in

character? You know, I kind of had, like, the butterfly moment.

And I knew that this was going to be one of the biggest matches of his career.

But I don't know, that kid sent a bolt of electricity through me.

Well, you know, look at it.

Walking into that type of

match with somebody like Foley, there's a psych up here. There's an adrenaline

factor. There is a, you are going to war.

But the talking has stopped.

No holds barred.

Anything is legal.

And you have to approach it with that mentality.

You know, they must be wondering, what am I going to have to do here tonight to

keep the Challenger down? Now cap this deck. That's not a steel chair.

But there isn't anything in the world I would have rather have done in that

moment than go to war with Mick Foley.

This

was

a proving ground.

We're just looking to do the best we can. We're trying to have the best match

can. We're trying to create something.

We

do

have civilians all around us, and you have to be conscious of them

on a certain level. And you also put great faith in the WWE security team.

If I could go back in time, I probably would not suplex Triple H on a

pallet that had a jagged shard of wood.

I don't think I actually realized that

the puncture wound in my leg from the pallet was...

really bad until uh later but i remember looking down and seeing a piece

of wood sticking out of my leg and thinking like oh geez that's not good in

mind it was like a a sliver when i pulled it out jesus that thing went in

really far i didn't really think about it after that i do remember towards the

end of that match and not really knowing why but thinking like one boot feels

super heavy but nothing more than that it really was later when they pulled the

You know, my boot off when I was backstage was pooling with blood and it

saturated the bottom of my boot and all the leather.

Adrenaline is a magical, magical substance.

I wasn't even aware that I made noises throughout the entirety of my matches.

It just, I guess, came from my subconscious.

I may be the most humble of wrestling origins.

I dropped an elbow on Nasty Ned Brady in Greensboro, North Carolina. I think it

was one day before I lost my two top teeth in a car accident.

I dropped an elbow, and just the song from the B -52s, a song that was popular

at the time called Love Shack, went through my mind. I looked up at the

and I said, bang, bang, bang.

On the door, baby. So I never again used the words, on the door, baby.

I'd say the more meaningful and the more I believed in that gesture, the better

the match was going to be.

I was a big believer in using things that were available to us. It's always

great to have something stashed away underneath the ring. And that night, you

know, I believe we, you know, we did, we had, I don't believe we did. We had

some goodies.

I

very

distinctly remember that barbed wire two by four coming out for the first time.

The shifting of the crowd to a different level of, oh, my God.

The only time I'd ever experienced that type of in -the -moment shift

in a crowd was Undertaker and Shawn Michaels in the first Hell in a Cell

I remember just getting goosebumps in that moment as I was hearing the crowd.

I've talked a little bit at my one -man shows about what I call the Foley risk

-reward ratio analysis.

And there are some things that are genuinely risky that don't pay off in a

reaction, you know, that makes that risk worth taking. And then there's the

barbed wire two -by -four.

There's not a lot of risk going on.

Nobody's likely to get too injured, a couple puncture wounds, maybe.

Well, Hugo loved to be part of the matches.

Hugo was the guy who dove out of the way just in the nick of time during the

cell match with The Undertaker. So he thrived on that stuff.

He's a

performer himself.

It was all in anticipation of upping the ante to something that people would be

in awe of. This character, the Cactus Jack character of this crazy, do

-anything, sadistic, no regard for himself or his body or anything

else and would do anything.

They needed to live on that.

I had watched a lot of the Japanese death matches, so to speak, even the

that Mick was involved in. I remember asking Mick about those matches and him

saying, oh, my God, they're terrible. Don't watch this.

I remember watching them and thinking, like, oh, yeah, they are terrible.

The guy would just fall into a bed of barbed wire or something for no apparent

reason.

And they were in front of like nobody.

Let's put that together in a way that we can tell a story with it. So it all

builds.

We can tell the difference. You

know, when I say we, it's because I'm pausing to say whether we're fans,

we're part of the universe. We can tell when the emotions are real. Freak fight

rules mean these two men have a license to maim. And that's exactly what we're

seeing here.

Triple H from limb to limb. He said he was going to spill his blood.

My parents obviously very, very proud of my career, everything like that. But I

believe this was like the first big, really big, like me main eventing a pay

-per -view that I bring them to.

Triple H, a bloody mess on our table here.

So they come to Madison Square Garden. I get them set up with tickets, the whole

thing.

I don't believe I had given them any forewarning other than to say, these

matches with Cactus Jack, it's probably going to be pretty aggressive.

But I don't think I had given them any more warning than that. My parents were

in the front row. After the barbed wire came out, I am bleeding heavily.

There's a moment where Mick clotheslines me over the top rope, go over the top

rope, land, and go sailing across the floor. As I hit and I'm draped over the

guardrail, as I look up, I'm face -to -face with my mom, who is blubbering,

horrible as a parent, funny.

As a son.

To hear her reactions was very poignant to me. You know, to watch a mother react

to her child, you know, being in the ring, one side of me, the personal side,

thought, you know, oh, my gosh, I felt so bad. And then the entertainer side of

me was like, oh, my God, this is awesome. He's so delivering.

And if it looks like I am overjoyed, it's because I am.

I mean, it's coming back to life. I can't physically do the things I did 20

years ago, but I get to relive it.

The

last

words Mr. McMahon said to me before I stepped through the curtain were, no

thumbtacks. What is that?

The epic shift of him pouring those thumbtacks out in that arena. You think

can't get them any higher, but wait, there's more. This guy's sadistic. He

stop for anything.

Right hands by Captain Jack.

The game dangerously close to the thousands of thumbtacks on the canvas.

Like, they're thumbtacks. It's not like it's going to kill you.

It doesn't feel good, for sure.

You know a suplex on a concrete floor, let alone a jagged pallet of

wood, is going to hurt. He's sick, JR. He may enjoy it. I don't know.

The love of God.

Triple X.

The penalty.

The penalty.

That's got to be over.

Kicking out of the pedigree was something that was unheard of at the

I don't know if I was the first, but I know when I kicked out, I mean, the roar

was deafening. And I mean, there was just this feeling that the only way we

could take this up a notch was to do that same move in thumbtacks.

And I knew we'd catch hell for it.

I just remember closing my right eye as tightly as I could. And literally, I

thought to myself, I could lose an eye, but think of the pop.

You know,

you do the pedigree and the text.

He lands. I'm covered. I could see them sticking out of his face. If I remember

correctly, he had one in his eyebrow.

It doesn't get any better than that. I'm a kid from Long Island. This is the

same venue that I used to hitchhike to and take trains to.

Now I've lost the biggest match of my career, and yet people are chanting my

name.

And at that point, I start thinking about the physical toll that the match

taken on both of us.

Triple H took such a pounding in that match. I mean, he just really took a

beating. I believe even after it was over that my line, you know, the next

at Monday Night Raw was, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you

game. And he had been maimed, like, in a way that we were not used to seeing in

WWE. Even if you've seen, like, some bloody feuds, you were not ready for the

level of suffering that Triple H went through.

Bobo. Yes, sir.

Go in the crowd and somebody tell my... I'm all right. All right, I'm going out

there right now. Thanks. Did you cut anywhere else?

Your forehead?

Just my head.

We get back and I get stitched up and everything else. And I remember I had

to... I was having a hard time even with the stitches getting my head to stop

bleeding. So I had like this gigantic turban of gauze and I think I might have

even had a towel on there to try to keep some weight on my head.

You know, of course, there he is, this bloody mess, standing there sweating.

And all I could think about was how worried I was about this man. And we

dating. We weren't together.

But, man,

I certainly was worried about him. And I still was thinking about the kiss.

So in my mind, Royal Rumble is the last match of my career.

And then there's been some injuries. Eddie Guerrero dislocates his elbow in

most horrific way possible.

And I get a call from Mr. McMahon, hey, pal, how about doing one more?

And, man, there's been an inference that this could be my last match of the

Rumble, but now we're going to put a sense of finality to it, that my career

on the line.

With Mick putting his career on the line, which at that time was tough for

even digest, when Mick was telling me about he was going to retire and he

to do it with me and he wanted to do it in Hell in a Cell, the honor that he was

going to give me that rub, it's hard to put words to that.

This has gone on too long.

It's time to finish it once and for all.

And no way out!

One more time, but this is it!

Your last shot at me, your last shot at the WWF title.

What? But one stipulation.

You name it.

I want your career on the line.

Here's this guy, his last match, his last moment.

He wanted to be everything that he can be for him, his career, everything he's

gone through, what he's put himself through, all that stuff. It was a very

emotional time.

The honor, all of it.

Trying to keep that all straight and still be the pro and be the, you know,

doesn't bother you. You know, just everything that you do when you're

make a name for yourself.

17 days until the biggest match of my life.

At No Way Out, in hell, in a cell.

I think at that point in time, the hell in the cell match, It was still almost

mythical.

Like you just would say the word, I want it in Hell in a Cell.

And it was an audible gasp in the crowd, like a shift.

You leave me with only one choice.

Hell in a Cell!

If you are in a storyline with somebody and you get to the point where it just

cannot be settled in any other way, it's gone as absolutely far as it can,

you've done everything possible with each other, that the only way to settle

this issue is inside Hell in a Cell.

And if you had seen Cell matches prior to that, I was there for the first one

with Taker and Sean. I'd never seen anything like it, and it blew my mind.

And then you go to the Mick and Taker one, and there was nothing ever like it,

or as there been since.

After what Mick and I just had gone through at the Royal Rumble, to think

we were now going into Hell in a Cell, like it just took it to a whole other

level. I was excited to get the call.

The chemistry with Triple H was there.

Royal Rumble had done a huge buy rate. Mr. McMahon attributed it to the Rumble.

We had some words over what role Triple H and I played in that. Believe me, we

had some words.

But I said, okay, okay, let us take that ball and run with it as far as we can

and do the very best we can to not only meet up with what we did at Royal

Rumble, but top it.

I remember going to a warehouse in Brooklyn where we had the cell

and talking through some of what these guys were going to be doing in the ring.

I remember looking at the cell itself and having the chance to really picture

and envision, you know, what this was going to look like when you were live.

you guys are going to do what?

The Harper Civic Center has been sold out for weeks in anticipation.

When you're in that moment,

you know, everybody talks about you walk through that curtain, it's all real.

You have to have that mindset.

I don't know. I always feel like I can tell when a performer, and I say it even

at NXT a lot or the Performance Center a lot, I say to the talent, I still feel

like you're playing wrestling.

You don't believe this. You don't buy it. You're just playing a character.

You're not the guy. You're the guy playing the role.

To me, what separates the ones that are great from the ones that are pretty

good?

Well, it's quite a task to get ready for something like Hell in a Cell.

I more or less have to metamorphosize into a different human being.

Kind -hearted, benevolent guys don't fare well inside the cell.

And so I have to become somebody who can fare well inside that cell.

Somebody's going to walk out of here with a WWF title.

I know Triple H has got to be concerned about one thing. There have been

promises fulfilled.

Having the perfect opponent certainly does not hurt.

And we also heard Cactus Jack promise that he was going to jump off the top of

this cage onto Triple H.

Will that come through, JR?

Generally,

I needed just some type of jolt.

Once I got out there, I like to start the matches with something big.

And once there was a big move, I would be jolted into that alternative reality

of becoming Cactus Jack, Mankind, whatever the situation might call for.

It was a mental game for me.

Physically, I couldn't do a fraction of what the other guys in the roster could

do.

If I could wrap my mind around a concept

and see it in my mind, then I was going to give it a try. And if it

worked out the way I hoped it would, that was great.

If it didn't, sometimes that was even better.

Look at Cactus. They're just sitting inside him. They won't let him lose.

This is his night.

Cactus, he baited Triple H in.

Oh, hello.

Well, the nut shot is an art form.

That's somewhat of a barbaric birth control.

Because what you're trying to do is not get hit in the nuts.

So usually there's a moment in time when you're doing a nut shot, when you are

thinking to yourself, like, I got to really sell that big because it's a nut

shot. And then you end up really selling it big because it was a nut shot.

And you end up thinking like, holy cow, I hope he lets me sell this for a while

because I really need time to recover from an actual nut shot.

There really is no art to it.

It's pretty much just trying to avoid getting hit in the nuts.

It can be difficult to get your signature moves into a match that has a

structure around that ring.

And so one of your signature moves is that you fly through the air

with an elbow.

And you realize you don't have the space you usually do to complete that move.

You have to improvise. And so I went up higher. I went up to the second rope. I

did it with a chair tucked underneath my arm. But because of the way I had to

position my body in order to drop that elbow, I ended up hitting my own face on

my own chair and broke my nose in the process.

And in ordinary circumstances, a broken nose, you know, would be a cause for a

timeout. It's not in our business, though.

There's this one oddity in the sense that nothing we're doing as far as

go. is eliciting much of a response.

And it wasn't until I threw the stairs at Triple H, he ducks out of the way,

they go through the cell structure, and now this building comes alive.

I

immediately

think back.

all of the times I've stressed that I will ascend that cell one more time.

And now, with the benefit of previous failure, that

failure being Hell in a Cell 1998 with The Undertaker, where I was having a

of a time ascending that structure, WWE has put in some convenient footholds for

me and every superstar that follows.

Stephanie's contributions to that rivalry cannot be understated.

Stephanie was great.

I was

standing

on the outside and I missed the time in the match when they start the climb. And

I just remember being so worried.

Barbed wire, thumbtack, all those things. You know, what's the art form?

isn't.

Rubbing barbed wire, rubbing the cage.

Sometimes the hitting with the barbed wire is bad. It's the pulling off of the

barbed wire that is worse. It just doesn't feel real comfortable.

Well,

there is no art to taking that. Well, you either do it or you don't do it.

I've got this chair.

What I don't realize is that the audience is there. You cannot have a

goes backwards, right? And I no longer have the gas in the tank to do it.

I try it two or three times. I really want that chair up on top with me. And

once I realize it's not meant to be, I start making that climb.

It did hit me.

Everything that we did in Royal Rumble, how do you get it to another level?

Oh, look at this jacket.

But how do you get there in a way that tells the right story? And then how do

you get there where you don't see the setup coming?

We've had an exciting match.

One that I think has come close to living up to the standards we set.

A month earlier, and we just have to find a way to create a memory.

Jack this Jack has got the two by four and the barbed wire again. And what

be worse than a two by four wrapped in barbed wire?

I don't know. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. That's two by four. The barbed wire is burning.

At one point in time, there was a conversation had about fire.

And then it came up that maybe that.

that moment of fire would be the perfect distract.

Captus has a dream, and it's coming true tonight.

Oh, my God, Hunter, he's got the bed.

He's got the cool intention for you.

He's got a pile driving on the fire. I think that's what Captus was signaling,

the pile driving.

Get that?

Hold that.

It's just such a crazy image of him on top of that cage with this barbed wire

two by four and getting it lit. And then him standing there with this crowd

behind him and just in its epic. I would never forget it, but it did

exactly what it needed to do when everybody was so obsessed with.

Oh, my God, there is this barbed wire 2x4 that is on fire.

What's going to happen? And the next thing you know, he's getting backdropped

and going through a cage and falling through.

It created an incredible moment.

And then when you went down the decision to have him then begin to come out of

that hole, like he's unstoppable, you know, in some manner.

Crazy son of a bitch is moving.

Cactus' lifelong dream of main eventing at WrestleMania is keeping him in the

hunt.

My God, this will finish it.

Let's go for the victory.

No dream has worked for me.

That's got to be it.

No dream has worked this. Kick out. Kick out, Cactus.

The idea, if you would have sat either me or Triple H down and said, you'll be

talking about this match 20 years from now, I would have thought you were

You only have a handful of special moments in this business as a performer,

things that really stick out.

I wish I could have appreciated it more for what it was, but looking back on it,

man, have I been lucky.

You know, it's said a lot that, you know, there are moments in time when you

things happen that kind of elevate a talent to the next level.

For me, there's nothing more in my career that elevated me to a different

than those two matches, the Royal Rumble and the Hell in a Cell match with Mick

Foley in 2000.

Hard to put into words how much those two matches meant on solidifying Triple

as a main event player.

And now the main event at WrestleMania will be a fatal four -way elimination

match. What? Turns out I did come back.

You, Triple H, will defend the World Wrestling Federation Championship

against Big Show, against The Rock, and

against this man, Mick Foley.

One of the ways we promoted WrestleMania was by appearing on Saturday Night

Live. And I remember Big Show going, do you think there's something going on

between Stephanie and Triple H?

Absolutely not. I just thought she was a very talented and very motivated

manager at his side. I didn't realize that it bled over into real life.

It's hard to say a particular moment.

Where I thought, oh my God, you know, Steph is the one.

Because, you know, it was so, so ridiculously

against all intelligent choices.

You know, we just, we were goofy around each other. Even just saying hello, we

would go to give each other a hug and it was super awkward. And, you know, try

to have a conversation and, you know, you walk away thinking like, God, I

sounded so... Stupid. Like, why did I say that? We were just constantly around

each other.

Constantly. Didn't necessarily have to have a reason, but we're just constantly

finding ourselves in the same places. Anytime I was next to him or I would

be around him, I would have this, like, my heart would race.

And it still does.

You know, I'm actually more in love with him every single day. And we have three

beautiful daughters. And he's an incredible father.

He is...

He is my knight in shining armor. He is the man that I dreamed of my entire

life.

You know, it's a funny thing for me. All my friends, my best friends in life, my

relationships that have lasted my whole life, my in -laws, just all of it,

everything in my life stems in some way from WWE in some manner.

But to me, it's not the defining characteristic of who I am. By far, my

girls.

Steph and all of that is the most important thing in my life by far. And

rest of it all went away, I'd be okay as long as I still had that.