SummerSlam has given us tons of This Day in History moments, and this one from August 22, 1999 had a few twists and turns and false rumors we’ve grown to expect at any event.
But it was more than any rumors, which we’ll get to further down, as Mankind was given the opportunity to win back the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
All he had to do was go through Steve Austin and Triple H.
It helped having Jesse Ventura as the special guest referee to maintain order, but that helped bring about some interesting speculation from fans.
Gotta love those rumors
False rumors nearly always abound at some point when there’s a guest referee involved, and when that guest ref is Jessie Ventura, it seems inevitable.
The prevailed rumor here was Mankind won because Ventura refused to raise the hand of a bad guy (heel).
Ventura debunked this in an interview later on and even said he made more money as a ref than he did as a wrestler. The latter was definitely a sign of changing times.
The rumor has persisted all of us fans love a good story, so it’s refused to go away.
Getting it back
The real story of the night was Steve Austin losing clean for the first time in a couple of years to Mankind.
An interesting caveat is Austin refused to drop the belt to Triple H because he didn’t think he was ready.
Special thanks to @awrestlinghistorian for the excerpt.
“Jesse grabbed an intruding Shane and threw him over the top rope to the thunderous roar of the crowd and ad-libbed a line that I’m sure stuffy Washington insiders must have loved: That’s for your old man, you little bastard!
“The match itself was pretty good and yeah, I even managed to hide those dreaded weaknesses. Best of all, I won the damn match. In a move that was a surprise to just about everybody, I defeated Stone Cold with a double arm DDT, becoming the first guy in almost two years to score a clean win over The Texas Rattlesnake.
“In a move that was something less of a surprise, I dropped the title to Triple H the following night in Iowa. I was the World Wrestling Federation Champion for a third time although it lasted less than twenty four hours. I think over time, I will gradually forget about that last little fact, and when my grandchildren asked about my career, I will simply point to a huge poster with the governor of Minnesota raising Grandpa’s arm in the air.” – Mick Foley, Foley Is Good book.
That’s a memory that’ll live on, and a great This Day in Wrestling moment. It was always a great moment when Mick Foley won a world championship.
As Foley’s said in interviews, he doesn’t fit into the mold of what many think of for a world champion, but he’s given so much to the sport it’s impossible not to feel good seeing him rewarded for his efforts to entertain us.
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