Original subtitles

Mankind and The Undertaker, they're battling for control of the dark side.

The only way mankind could take on The Undertaker was to have a really dark

soul. There was only one way to go with it, and that was violence.

They were put on this earth to fight each other.

It's different, it's gritty, I love it.

You're going to get buried alive, you're like, with dirt?

Nick and I took years off each other's careers.

You have to admire my spunk.

The Mankind Undertaker story, I think that was there.

This rivalry has just escalated into a war.

When two legends collide.

Their rivalry stays pinned in our minds forever.

This is where we break down the legendary stories behind the greatest

of all time.

I'm Freddie Prinze Jr., and this is WWE Rivals.

This is one of my favorite rivalries, Undertaker and Mankind. The types of

matches they had were so different.

So unique and so crazy. This rivalry, as far as the extremity of

it, can never be topped.

You got Taker, who's dead.

You know, you have... Literally, they call him the dead man.

You have Mick Foley, who's crazier than crazy. I mean, you can't get any crazier

than Mick Foley.

Let's talk about Undertaker in 1995, just before Mankind comes over in 96.

I've never seen anybody that had more respect in any business, anywhere.

There was one constant that was Undertaker, always.

He was the barometer.

I want to switch over to Mankind and paint a picture of what kind of wrestler

Mankind was.

Legitimate. He brought a pain tolerance.

No other man that I've been around.

That's why coming into the WWE and facing The Undertaker, it was as real as

possibly could be.

Look at the car. It's bad for my image.

Mick was a different kind of cat.

Hi, nice to meet you.

The man has got a really gentle nature about him. You like the Backstreet Boys?

Yeah.

It just kind of brings an energy to a room that you enjoy being around.

And then you go out to the arena and he turns into a complete lunatic.

It's a story based on brutality.

I rode with Mark Calloway

before he was The Undertaker. When we were together in WCW, I split rooms.

with Mark Calloway. I stayed at Mark Calloway's parents' house.

But this guy who showed up at Survivor Series, this was The Undertaker.

Awesome is the only word I can take to describe this Undertaker.

He hits like a ton of brick, this guy.

I'm watching the pay -per -view, and I very much realize that this is, on a

certain level, the same guy that I drove with and split rooms with. But on

another level, he's a completely different guy.

Oh, inverted pall driver.

Then he calls the tombstone.

Look at this. Look at the arms.

Please. R .I .P., pal.

The almost white face as a child. I've watched that. And there was a genuine

fear to that character.

He's got six foot ten. He's over 300 pounds.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

Coming down the aisle with his miniature.

It really became apparent to me early on that Undertaker and Mark Calloway, they

were going to somehow have to become the same person. Mark Calloway got put way,

way back on the back shelf. And the Undertaker is what most people most of

time saw.

You know, the spirit of Undertaker has been handed down throughout the

centuries.

For five or six years running, Undertaker had beaten guys who were

than him or bigger than him.

People just expected me to just mow through everybody.

Somehow he became this iconic good guy.

The Undertaker had been a character that conquered monsters.

What if we had somebody that, while maybe they weren't quite as big as The

Undertaker, was nuts and didn't care?

Part of what I brought to the game was this reputation for

wildness.

Kept pitching and pitching Mick to Vince.

So I told Vince, I said, hey, look, if nothing else, we bring Foley in.

We give him a shot.

I talk to the Undertaker.

He knows him. He likes him. Once Vince saw Mick and the Undertaker do their

thing, he would like it.

Secondly, once Vince got to know Mick on an individual basis, he would love the

guy.

I didn't know at the time that Mr. McMahon had not been a big fan of mine.

Jim Ross was pushing for me. Mr. McMahon slammed his hand down on the table,

said, all right, I'll bring him in.

But I'm covering up his face.

So when Jim Ross tells me, this is how you're starting, I realize you only have

one chance to make a first impression.

And on the eighth day, God created mankind.

Why was he having such a bad day?

When I debuted in 1996 as Mankind, that character was kind of a tortured soul.

You understand me, don't you, George?

You understand that mankind is in pain.

I wanted to be a darker character because I felt like the only way this

creation could feasibly take on The Undertaker was to have a really dark

soul. You think you're normal?

Think inside!

You are merely a mirror image of all my atrocities! From a storytelling

perspective.

Mick Foley is borderline genius.

April 1st, 1996, the day after WrestleMania.

From Death Valley, weighing 328 pounds, The

Undertaker!

You have one character in The Undertaker who dishes out a lot of pain to people.

And, you know, that's his calling card.

And then now you have this character who just thrives on it.

Mankind's debut. We have one person at the table here who had a very unique

perspective on this because you happen to be in the ring with the man he was

about to have this rivalry with. Yeah, I just remember when he came out, I just

remember rolling the floor and thought, okay, there's a bunch of carnage about

to happen. I'm just going to get out of the way.

I'm coming hot out of the gate with The Undertaker. Like, I'm not waiting in

line. I attack the biggest dog in the yard.

Now you have this crazy character going against this monster babyface.

I want to say a match made in heaven. I think it was more of a match made in

hell.

Getting there and debuting in WWE

with The Undertaker, that is the ultimate pressure.

Someone like Mankind coming in being just as diabolical, maybe even more so

The Undertaker.

Now we have two characters that have no parameters.

There was only one way to go with it, and that was violence.

But The Undertaker got a chance.

He was going to go for it and Foley gave him that chance.

And after their first match, They had a lot of trust for each other.

How do you tell a story between two supernatural -type characters? You can't

just have a regular match. So we have the boiler room brawl.

Mankind basically lived in a boiler room with his pet rat, George.

That was his home. That's where mankind felt at home.

So the idea to have a match in mankind's environment was unique.

The way this match works is that both superstars start the match in the boiler

room. They have to fight all the way through the arena, get to ringside, and

obtain the Undertaker's powerful urn from Paul Bearer's hands.

We actually had to record the boiler room brawl the night before SummerSlam.

Yeah, Undertaker just needs a couple of minutes to get into it.

Being able to record it in advance took away a lot of that risk where if

something didn't go exactly as we wanted it to go, we could stop it down and

shoot it a different way.

Here we go.

You rolling?

Board of the Room Brawl, I was there when we recorded it. That was brutal,

And that was just all -out war.

Let's do it. Good luck.

Open it.

Say you're sorry before we ring the bell, because I'm going to tell you

now. I ain't holding nothing back. I suggest you don't either.

Mankind is in that boiler room someplace.

Oh.

Gundarina in Cleveland.

Filthy. Dirt everywhere. Dust everywhere.

Anything that wasn't tied down, you were probably going to get hit with.

The boiler room ball allows me to utilize everything around me.

So I thought, here's something that can highlight the things that I can do.

Everything that happened in that match, you know, it was real.

I climb up that ladder. I know there's some cardboard boxes that I'm hoping are

going to break my fall.

They do to some extent, but half my body doesn't land on those boxes, right? I

undershoot it just a little bit.

I think Mick and I took years off each other's careers.

A potato in wrestling speak is

a really stiff blow above and beyond what we usually deliver. And sometimes

our urgency to have a great match, we might serve up a couple of potatoes.

We get to the point where we'll pick up from here tomorrow at the pay -per

-view. I remember getting a cut on my elbow.

They have a doctor there and they said, hey, you want me to sew that up? And I

was like, no, I can't sew it up. It's got to be open tomorrow or it's not

to, you know, it's not going to match up. You know, how in the world did I get

stitches in between this and this?

The Boiler Room Brawl.

Coming up next here at SummerSlam.

I remember walking backstage on the actual day of the event.

Terry Runnels was walking behind me, and she goes, do you know that every time

that your arm bends, there's blood shooting out of your elbow?

So I'm walking down the hall, and every time my arm would come down, it's just

shooting out of my arm.

He actually had to re -bust open his elbow to create some continuity.

I mean, it was a big deal.

Wow. Pretty remarkable thing that he did.

We were able to have the performers make their way out to the arena and finish

the match in front of the live audience.

I had to come up with something because we were both so beaten up and worn out

from the boiler room brawl the night before. And now we have to like

appear backstage and brawl in a meaningful way.

You use your surroundings.

I see a coffee machine.

Sorry. You know, you apologize ahead of time.

What's hot coffee?

There just happened to be a big pot of coffee.

He saw it. He grabbed it.

Scalding hot coffee. No one had scalding coffee on their bingo card, but a guy's

got to do what a guy's got to do when he's up against a female.

Mankind's going to come into the arena.

But you didn't just have to get out of the boiler room into the ring. You had

claim ownership of the urn.

It's amazing either of these men can even stand.

Oh, my God, did you hear that?

And the undertaker, the victor here tonight at SummerSlam.

Give him the urn.

Nobody thought Paul Bearer would ever turn on The Undertaker.

People were pissed.

People were upset.

Paul Bearer was like Undertaker's dad.

I mean, he represented a father figure.

The audience. And when you think about father figure, you think about trust,

think about respect, you think about loyalty. So when the audience feels

betrayed, it really ignites an emotional reaction.

And now what? Yeah. What else can happen?

There's a legitimate chance that, you know, you're going to see the end of The

Undertaker.

They told a very cinematic story with this mesh. Had you ever seen anything

this before?

Well, the company was doing things that had never been done before.

And it definitely worked because we're talking about it 20 years later.

Mankind, you will never rest.

You get to a spot with character where they're so rich, you almost need to

invent new ways for them to battle. That's what happened with The Undertaker

Mankind. A new match was created just for them called the Buried Alive match.

And they explained, well, there's going to be a grave plot with a six -foot

hole. And in order to win the match, you have to put your opponent in the grave

and bury them alive.

Well, you know, when you say you're going to get buried alive, you're like,

with dirt?

All that's left to do is to fill this grave with your rotting maggot

-infested carcass.

Are you ready to see someone get buried alive?

This is... The first time a match like this has happened, and it's a constant

flirtation with death.

Somebody's literally going to be buried alive.

If you die, you lose.

It's basically the stipulation. And I remember even Vince going, this is an

unsanctioned match. This is the first ever unsanctioned match. I don't believe

you. And whoever was on the other mic goes, well, yeah, obviously, because

there's no way this could happen.

Oh, my goodness.

This war continues.

It's this match that presents all these opportunities because whatever we're

doing in and around the ring is just a pretense to get us up here to the grave.

These two evil entities are battling for control of the dark side and to tell

the story that needs to be told with these two guys, you're going to have to

something that is desperate and, you know, it's just like Hail Mary.

It kind of reminded me of watching a Friday the 13th with Jason. I was going

say that. And Michael Myers, because whenever they would get hit, you know,

was always that moment you thought they were down and dead, and all of a sudden

they were alive.

You're like, oh, run, you know, get out the way, don't stand there. He's not

dead.

These guys are trying to kill each other.

I end up getting chokeslammed into a grave, and then the earth starts coming

down on top of me.

I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I've been through a lot, and now a human being is

throwing earth on me.

Mankind is not moving.

And you have people thinking to themselves, surely nobody's getting

front of our eyes.

Terry Gordy comes out as the executioner. He waylays The Undertaker.

Mankind is coming back under threat!

Now begins this.

mammoth attempt to completely fill that grave in a few minutes without any

machinery. Everybody wants to bury the Undertaker!

The real story is there was a myth calculation of how long it would

take to fill up the hole once Undertaker was in there. So we had to send out

half the roster.

We rush out there with shovels to fill up a full grave.

Try filling in a grave with a shovel in 10 minutes on live television. That was

the dumbest thing.

We didn't get a quarter of the grave filled.

Mick Foley's scraping dirt in. He's blown up from the match.

But if you'd have seen the crowd that night, it was horror and shock thinking

that Undertaker had actually been killed. People were buying it.

And I'm thinking, somebody's coming over this rail.

There are people to this day that were kids then

that are adults now.

Like, you don't know what that did to me. I mean, I was freaked out. Like, I

to sleep with the lights on for a while.

This one's over. The Undertaker did not survive.

I remember looking at the face of a father and he says,

I can't believe I'm watching this because we're watching a human being get

buried.

When that purple glove come out of the bird, man, it was another one of those

moments that people did not expect, but gave them such hope.

It's those kind of stories that let you know that what you do means something.

We've had these incredible wars, Mankind and Undertaker.

And

I

haven't fared that great.

And we get this lightning strike, and the whole crowd gasps.

His hand busts through, still gloved, and we're left with that lasting image.

It actually worked because you had the right ingredients to make it work. All

that's important is the setup for what's coming next. To get to the match that

you remember. That's right.

That's right, because you're setting up something great. Yes.

It's a Mankind preppy look, just in time for summer.

What we had to wait for was the second Hell in a Cell match ever.

A Hell in a Cell match is a match in which you compete inside of a ring that

completely covered by a solid steel cage.

The structure itself is intimidating.

The first Hell in a Cell match, they were looking to do something

And mankind was looking to, I've got to do something bigger.

And if that's not enough, I can guarantee that mankind will have a

everyone that you will not soon forget.

I had a lot of concerns going into that Hell in a Cell match with The

Undertaker. Have a nice day!

The challenge for me...

was not trying to reach the bar that Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker had

in October of 1997.

It was to just do some kind of justice to it.

Terry Funk and I visit the WWE offices.

We watch the first cell match in its entirety.

After about a minute of odd silence, I said to Terry, I said, what am I going

do? And then he starts to laugh. And he starts riffing about being thrown off

the top of the cell.

And he keeps laughing.

And I look at him and I said, I think I can do that.

And every day I would approach The Undertaker with the idea of starting the

match on top of the cell.

And every single day he shot it down.

And he persisted. You know, he really wanted to take that bump because he felt

like he needed it. And I ended up asking him.

Like, Mick, why do you want to kill yourself?

And it was a serious moment.

And it got to the point, I think it was the day of, I'm a firm no.

And somehow he got to Vince and convinced Vince that it was okay.

And then they double teamed me.

And it's like, Mark, he's pretty sure that he can take that bump.

And I'm like.

No, I don't think we need it.

And they kept on. I'm like, look, fine.

If that's what you want to do, then we'll do it.

We have only seen one Hell in a Cell matchup in WWF history, and it was the

unbelievable match that I think I've ever witnessed, JR.

It is a perverse, vile, diabolical structure.

Satanic.

Hellish.

It will absolutely be unforgiving as this night progresses.

We know we got some fireworks.

We know we're going to do something no one's ever thought to do before.

The Undertaker has a broken foot.

We think the worst part of his night physically is going to be that journey

to the top of the cell.

Undertaker in a very precarious position.

between the Undertaker and the concrete floor, but imagination.

He's there!

He's there!

And apparently the Hell in a Cell match is officially underway in the most god

-awful...

Well, if a lot of white people are...

I can see myself standing there watching him fall.

He ain't getting up from this.

And I'm thinking in my head, just move, man, move.

You know, when he grabs me by the collar and the waistband, bam, off I go. Like

that flight didn't seem like it was ever going to end.

Mankind went off the cage.

Everybody in the arena, I no doubt would think they would have thought that this

thing is over.

When we really put that in perspective, mankind could have died that day. Right,

yeah. Oh, yeah.

This was a guy that was willing to die in the middle of that ring to go out

there and get his point across.

It was so surreal that I thought that maybe I was having like an aneurysm or

something.

I wasn't really seeing what I was seeing.

I generally felt that he was dead.

He

was

falling through a wood table that was sitting on a concrete floor.

And there was no padding under the table.

It was Foley's body hitting wood, hitting concrete.

So in my mind's eye, I'm thinking, an average human being cannot live through

that ordeal.

And obviously, Mick Foley was far from being an average human being.

He landed through the table right at my feet, and I'm looking down at him, and

he opened his eyes, and he smiled.

And he started moving around, and I'm like, that's the toughest son of a bitch

right there.

I have ever seen in my life.

The Undertaker is a legend,

right? The biggest, probably the biggest one in our business.

But I'll admit that when I was lying underneath the wreckage of that table

half my body was sticking out into the crowd and they were chanting The

Undertaker's name, there was part of me thinking, maybe you guys are cheering

for the wrong guy.

Wait, now the cage is coming back down. I guess they've got to get the

Undertaker off of the top of this cage. The Undertaker is coming down. He's

climbing down before the cage is even on the ground.

So now I'm thinking, boy, we're really screwed because this is early in the

match. I mean, really early.

How in the hell are we going to finish?

Again, if this match has ended, we apologize.

I have never... Why do you apologize for that?

And lo and behold, somehow...

Mick, knowing that he's got to deliver for this audience and for The

he wills himself back into this match.

And that's what it was.

That sucker, man.

He got off of that gurney. He started back up the cell. I'm like, good night.

When I start climbing up and the fans in the Civic Arena realize this thing's

not over, they respond with a type of energy that could have lit that city up

for a week.

I just get the goosebumps thinking of it.

This is absolutely amazing.

I've suffered a lot from that fall. So when I get up to the top, I don't have

much left in the tank. And I'm thinking in my head.

At least the worst part of my night is over. I was tank corrected because

are about to get a lot worse.

When Mick hit that panel, and the panel just broke away, and it was such a

violent, I mean, just a whole

other level of violent bump that he took.

He rotates another few inches.

He don't get up.

And that one night, for whatever reason, my feet never left the mesh.

And it's a godsend they did not, because when I hit that mesh, and it just, like

a hot knife through butter.

There's a chair up on top of that cell structure that I've had the wisdom and

foresight to bring up there with me.

And when the Undertaker chokeslamming and I go through, that chair follows me

down.

Every foot of the way, it smashes into my face, you know, to this day.

Still missing those teeth. And one of them ends up lodged in my nostril.

I just knew he was through.

And I looked at him and looked down at him. I said, turn around the referee and

said, he's out. He's gone.

It's over.

He's not going to get up.

I was scared to death for him.

The ring fills up with people to check on me. It looks like Terry haphazardly

touching my face.

It wasn't just touching my face. He was taking my pulse.

Stands up, says to the undertaker, he's still breathing.

over to my stomach and my head goes like this the reason my head bobbed is

because my first conscious thought was where'd their shoes come from how is he

still standing up i don't have a damn flu oh my oh and he's smiling he's got a

tooth in his nose he's kind of got a perverse smile on his face like i'm not

dead yet you may think i'm done but i'm not done

I'm punching him and trying to create time so that he can get his thoughts

together again.

And every time I hit him, I'm just saying, Mick, stay down.

Just stay down.

I went into the match with a broken ankle.

You know, I'm questioning my manhood, like, right? Like, I ain't saying about

my ankle.

After this.

To watch mankind

and The Undertaker create that magic in such a dangerous situation, to

have that on your mind and still be able to perform at the highest level, that's

what true pros do. That's what professionals do.

Just the spectacle of trying to watch two human beings limp over the finish

line. By God, we didn't cut the match short.

Steele just ramming and jamming into the flesh of the Undertaker.

And there's a cover. That's it. Tell me it's over. Got him.

The Undertaker, he had the long mane of dark red hair, and he leaned over and he

said the words, go home.

What's he got now? Uh -oh.

He went under the ring to get something.

What is it?

A sack. Put it in a bag or something.

Got it in that.

I got it. What is that?

Stump pack.

Uh -oh.

Stump pack.

My God.

He has to finish.

He has to get to the tacks.

He's going to try to throw the Undertaker right on those tacks.

Some of the things that seemed like good ideas at the time have not aged well.

But

I

think you have to admire my spunk.

I'm trying to reason with a man who's just cheated death twice.

Nick, we're good.

Just stay down.

I gotta get to the tax, brother.

I'm... We don't need the tax, man.

We don't need the tax.

We got to the tax.

He didn't like the way the tax worked the first time. We did it twice.

The referee, Mike Chioda, he wasn't the match referee, but he came out and he

said, we're bringing a stretcher out for you.

And I asked him this question. I say, have I already been on a stretcher

tonight?

And he informed me that I had. And I just said, I can't be on two stretchers

one night.

Look at mankind. It's almost as if he doesn't want, you are kidding, to leave

a stretcher.

I mean, that tells you everything you need to know about Mick Foley, the

entertainer.

He was willing to put it all on the line so that he could have that match that

he wanted.

He wanted it for me, and he wanted it for the fans.

And he's always been like that.

That match.

That's the next level stuff that most people don't have inside them.

It really is incredible.

It's a beautiful art of violence.

That level of sacrifice, commitment, is something that I think will forever be

remembered by the fans and why those two men will forever be respected.

We didn't watch it. We believed it.

You know, I had a hard time dealing with the aftermath of the South.

I'm talking about for years to follow.

Nothing I would ever do from that moment on would make fans forget how we had

made them feel.

in that moment of time. I could get pretty cantankerous about it. It was a

night, but I've gotten a lot of publicity off of it over the last two

Every day, I'm asked about the same match, the same question, did it hurt?

And I was tired of it.

And it wasn't until The Undertaker came to see me doing one of my storytelling

shows, and he said these words to me. He said, you know, Jack, what you and I

did that night...

will outlive us both people will be talking about that match when we're both

dead and gone and when i drove home that night i felt like a giant weight had

been lifted off my shoulders because i felt free to embrace it and free to

celebrate it and free to talk about it

And now the last person I'd like to mention without whom none of this would

happened. I might be here on this very night, but I'd be out there watching it

instead of up here being inducted. And the person in question is The

Over the years, I have often wondered where my life would have gone had The

Undertaker and I not crossed paths when we did in April of 1996.

I'm not in the WWE Hall of Fame without The Undertaker.

I'm not in a position where I can continue to wear sweatpants and a fanny

in public.

I'm not in a position where I can be a guy with one ear who doesn't care what

other people think about him.

I look back at that moment in time and I'm just so grateful

that our lives were entwined.

Very rarely do we talk business.

It's more of a, how are you? How's the family?

How are you feeling?

We have our history.

No one's going to take that away.

And we have a very prominent piece of history in the WWE legacy.

The story of Undertaker and Mankind, I mean...

it'll last the annals of time.

My life would not be the same without you, and that's the truth.

Thank you, man. And I don't say that to boast. I mean, it is what it is. I mean,

it's a great story that was told by two guys that are still here to tell

it.