#4
Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker
No Mercy ’02
This is without a doubt the most bloody, violent Hell in a Cell match on the list.
I was 12-years-old when I first saw this battle, and I remember thinking that for the first time, I understood why my parents didn’t want me watching pro wrestling in their home. There are two scenes I will never forget – the first was Undertaker being hit with the steel steps, and blood literally pouring from his face into giant pools on the ground. The second saw Brock Lesnar tie his opponent’s broken hand to a belt, hang it from the cage, and brutalize the injured appendage with a steel chair; all the while Paul Heyman screaming, “you’re gonna die now!”
It wasn’t just the blood – other Hell in a Cell matches had plenty of blood, although nobody had it raining down their body – it was the physicality. It looked, and it felt like the two actually hated each other, and as a pre-teen I was convinced Brock was going to kill the Undertaker. Don’t get me wrong, by that point I knew it was scripted programming, but I’d never seen two heavyweight brutes “accomplish” what those two did inside Hell in a Cell. It was borderline demonic.
Mankind being thrown off the cage was the single biggest “spot” in the match’s history, and I would never deny the emotion in every Foley match. But this one left the biggest impact on me, and a lot of the younger fans that became religious viewers in the months following the Attitude Era.
If you want to know why WWE started cracking down on violence in the years to follow, this is a really good place to start your search.
