Foley and the high spot

[Guest nikjohns]

My first attempt at writing an extended article.  There is a discussion of the content in the WWF folder, so please comment on the actual writing.

 

 

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“Er, you aren’t writing an article bashing Mick Foley and expecting to get accepted, are you?”

 

Well… yes.

 

Mick Foley’s jump / fall off the Hell in a Cell at the King of the Ring in 1998 was a pivotal moment for the WWF.  Foley gained a lot of respect from wrestlers and fans alike for daring to do the spot, the likes of which had never been seen before in a WWF wrestling ring.

 

Sure, people had done much, much more dangerous things to themselves – Hell, even Foley had participated in the King of the Deathmatch tournament in Japan, which involved fire, barb wire and C4 explosives.  Any of these things alone could kill a man if used improperly, yet Foley walked away.  

 

Then in the Summer of 1998, a moment occurred that would be shown, re-shown and downloaded by every wrestling fan with a net connection.  A moment that would change the face of the WWF forever.  This sounds like I’m announcing the news or something.  Anyway, above all hyperbole and movie trailers, Foley’s HIAC jump was a defining moment in WWF history.

 

It signalled a change in what was acceptable in the WWF.  Foley took a risk.  This risk had never been needed in the WWF until this point – they had gone for nearly 70 years (1900-1970) without so much as a gimmick match more than a tag team encounter, but times change.  Cage matches were introduced; ladder matches soon followed.  From these, crowds wanted more.  It is a natural reaction – why watch a regular match when you can watch a CAGE MATCH?

 

This is not totally the case though – enough was made of regular matches to make them worthwhile.  By this I mean that cage matches were a speciality, rather than expected.  A regular singles match could be appreciated as a great match by the audience.  They weren’t sat waiting for the cage match, they were happy with what they were getting.

 

Foley changed that with one jump.

 

That one moment made people stop looking at Mankind as a wrestler, and they saw him as a “By God maniac”.  He’d be the one to take the risks.  He’d give you something exciting for your money, and you could guarantee it.  There wasn’t a Mick Foley PPV match from KOTR 1998 through to his retirement that didn’t feature him doing something crazy – usually falling or being hit with something.  That was what the fans cared about.  

 

Who cares if Val Venis is going to defend the IC title for 15 minutes against Ken Shamrock?  Neither of them will do anything as interesting as Foley, who’ll probably fall off something.

 

This hurts the WWF in the long run.  Matches become geared towards a high spot – look at Shane McMahon vs. the Big Show at Backlash 2001.  The whole match was a prelude to Shane jumping however many thousand feet from the top of that steel thing.  Indeed, seemingly the only purpose for making the structure in the first place was to have Shane jump off it.

 

For another example, look at every Hardyz match since the end of ’99, mainly PPVs.  They have had ladder, cage, table and TLC matches abound, and every one has been about Jeff doing something silly and doing a Swanton Bomb off object [X] onto person [Y] who is lying on object [Z].  The Swanton Bomb in itself is a visually impressive move, but doing it off a ladder through a table looks absolutely spectacular.  Doing it as a one off move is a great way of gaining extra credibility as a wrestler and as a way of finishing a feud.  However, doing it on a regular basis hurts the move and makes people want more and more.  Jeff Hardy doing a Swanton Bomb off a Cell?  I wouldn’t doubt it in the long run.

 

Mick Foley himself has acknowledged the fan’s reaction, in his book Foley is Good, he mentions his retirement match against HHH, where he says that the fans in attendance wouldn’t buy any near fall at the start of the match.  Because they knew Foley would end up on top of the cell.  That changed the entire dynamic of the match, because had it been any other wrestler in the match, there was a chance that there could have been no fighting outside of the ring.  But Foley made his own reputation, and has to live with it.

 

Even two years after Foley retired from active wrestling, his mantra of bigger and better has continued.  Just this week on Smackdown, the Undertaker did two moves onto the Rock, on a car.  The Tombstone was his finishing move for nigh on 9 years, and it took almost 8 years for someone to kick out of it.  You take away someone’s arms, and hold them upside down.  Nothing is supporting them, as you drop them on their head.  That is one Hell of a move in anyone’s book.  To do the move onto a car roof is extending a move that is already seen as one of the Most Painful Moves Ever and extending it – but not in a good way.  I’m not saying that one Tombstone-on-a-car will kill the move, but it is almost saying that the Tombstone alone is not enough to keep the Rock down, despite having kept people down for 10 years.

 

Where do things go from here then?

 

One thought would be that the high spots are cut back, and that the emphasis is placed back on the wrestling.  Yeah right.  The worst case scenario is that the spots get more and more extreme, before someone gets seriously hurt.  I mean, we’ve all seen a load of Swanton Bombs off cages and ladders, so where’s the appeal this time?  Why should I care if he does it again, and why should I care if he just does it off the top rope?  I want him to do it off a Cell, through a table that is on fire.  But after he does that, then what?  It’s a downward spiral, but there is one hope:  Injury.

There have been no “extreme” entrances to the ring since Over the Edge ’99, so an accident is enough to get Vince to tone things down.  Someone making a mistake on a “high risk manoeuvre” is going to be a terrible thing, but it’d be one hell of a wake up call.

 

Secondly, we could see more matches like the Big Show v Shane match I mentioned earlier; the whole match is just getting to the bit people want to see.  Who cares that they are going to spend ten minutes punching each other around and actually wrestling when you know that someone’s going to be doing a major fall?  You honestly want the entire WWF to be like that match?  Really?  REALLY?  Thought not.