Watching the Russo 98 timeline (available at www.kayfabecommentaries.com) and Russo claims the second bump through the cage was accident. Foley has also always claimed this was an accident many times.

 

Do you believe them? Seems like a pretty mental accident.

 

Foley often tells the story about Vince thanking him and then telling him never to do anything like that again. Surely there would have been an apology of sorts for not providing a strong enough cage if the spot were not planned?

 

Then you have the issue of psychology: how were they meant to get off the cage the second time after the first dramatic fall? Just both climb down?

 

Undertaker was positioned on the correct spot for him to be off the panel which feel through. I guess as a counter argument you'd think they'd make sure the chair wasn't on that section - but then maybe that was the mistake?

 

 

 

 

I believe them. When Vince told Foley not to do that again, I think he was also talking about the first bump-the one off the cell. I don't think Vince knew that was going to happen beforehand. It comes down to Foley and Taker planning the match and Foley thought he had to do something to stand out apart from the Shawn Michaels HIAC, knowing he wasn't as athletic to do cool stuff so he opted to just bump off higher places.

Foley has gone deeper into detail at some point or another, I forget exactly when, but he's talked about the second bump. I think he's just embarrassed at how badly it went and how he almost got himself killed on such an insanely stupid spot, so he rarely wants to go into the specifics about what they were trying to do.

 

The cage was deliberately gimmicked to break. (Obviously they'd planned to get inside the cell at some point, just from the fact that they'd pre-planned the spot with the bag of thumbtacks stored under the ring.) Their plan was that it would break gradually, rung by rung, and the whole panel would be tilting downward slowly enough that Foley would just sort of roll diagonally downward and finally take a bump into the ring which wouldn't be much worse than a standard Flair-toss off the top. The way that Taker does the chokeslam is indicative that they knew it was going to break; he throws it Akira Taue-style, no altitude at all, not even getting Foley's feet all the way off the floor. They were trying to make the impact as light as possible. But the gimmicking was obviously done badly, and so Foley ended up taking that hideous Super Dave bump instead.

 

Was the panel that Foley fell through the same one that broke partly when Taker stepped on it before the first bump? If so, and if they STILL picked that one to do the chokeslam on, then that's pretty good proof that the panel was supposed to collapse.

That's what I've always thought about it. It was gimmicked to break a little bit so they could get back in the ring, but it ended up caving under his weight.

 

And on top of that, leaving the chair on the panel, allowing it to fall with him and hit him in the face was definitely an accident. Foley goes into it in his book and it makes sense, he clearly didn't want that to happen.

 

"I wish he'd left it anywhere else."

If the first bump never happened, but the accidental second bump did, do you think this match would still be remembered as fondly, intensely, and passionately as it has been?

No. The visual of him flying off the cage and him going through the table is just way more iconic. Plus J.R.'s call of the first bump is a lot more emotional. The second bump is probably more brutal but it doesn't have the same effect.