‘Having a heart attack’ – The WWE match so brutal a referee ‘almost threw up’ at ringside
The punishment sustained by Mick Foley at WWE’s infamous Hell in a Cell match in 1998 is well known.
Under the guise of daredevil performer Mankind, he threw caution and his body to the wind in the battle against The Undertaker at King of the Ring.
The sight of him hurtling from the top of the Cell roof, then later falling through it, is etched into wrestling history.
Even casual fans recognise Foley’s silhouette crashing through the announce table; even non-fans have heard of the tooth lodged in his nose.
Though lesser known, it has also emerged that The Undertaker was bonkers enough to have worked that match with a fractured ankle, pushing his pain barrier to the limit to ensure the marquee contest went ahead – the end result so bad that Logan Paul squirmed just talking to the legend about it.
The figure almost nobody discusses from this bout, however, is that of the third man in the thick of the battle: the referee.
Tim White was the official for the match, and what he saw that night shaped his life, his reputation and, indirectly, the end of his career.
An iconic WWE figure, he was a trusted aide whose famous friendship with Andre The Giant – the company’s first Hall of Famer – saw him cemented his place as one of WWE’s most influential yet understated figures.
On that night in 1998, he was the closest witness to the chaos as Foley and Undertaker tore themselves apart, and his own recollection of the experience remains one of the most vivid accounts of just how frightening the night truly was.
The ringside nightmare that still haunts WWE
“I told them I was having a heart attack through the whole match,” he told Sean Mooney years later.
“When I spoke to [Foley and Undertaker’, they told me the spots I needed to know, but I didn’t know they were going to do some of that stuff.”
Seemingly unaware of some of the chaos that followed, White was forced to endure the shock of it along with the global pay-per-view audience – checking on Mankind to discover he was “bleeding from his eyes, his ears, everything.”
The moment that shook him the most was the one he never saw coming. “When [Taker] threw him off the top, down through the announce table, I had no idea that was coming. That’s when I almost threw up.”
Foley’s injuries have been retold for decades, but White’s own ordeal was not without consequence. He ended the match with dozens of thumb tacks embedded in his arm and the kind of emotional exhaustion that only comes from thinking a man might lose his life on live television.
If that were the end of White’s relationship with Hell in a Cell, it would still be one of the most traumatic officiating experiences in WWE history. But the structure would come to define him in a much more devastating way.
Two years later, at Judgment Day 2002, White returned to referee another Hell in a Cell match, this time between Triple H and Chris Jericho. The bout proved to be the turning point in his career.
In the chaos of the match, White collided with the Cell wall and the ring post, suffering an injury that would reshape the rest of his life.
Jericho recalled the moment in his book Undisputed, writing: “He agreed that I could knock him off the apron to the cage, which would leave him incapacitated… [but] when I drove him into the side of the cage, he separated his shoulder so badly that it never truly healed.”
White finished the match despite the damage, but the injury never healed properly. It robbed him of the strength and stability a referee relies on and lingered through every attempt at recovery.
Jericho added: “Timmy was as tough as a nihilist’s ear and never said a word about the true extent of his injury.”
The injury that changed a referee’s life forever
White fought to return, but his comeback at WrestleMania XX in March 2004 brought his refereeing days to an end. During the closing three count of Chris Jericho vs Christian, his shoulder gave out again. Fans did not realise it at the time, but that was the final fall of his in-ring career.
WWE kept him within the company in the years that followed, but his time formally came to an end in 2009 when he was released after 24 years of service. He remained adored by wrestling colleagues long after stepping away and was remembered as a steadying influence.
White passed away in June 2022 at the age of 68. One year later, WWE honoured him with the Warrior Award as part of the 2023 Hall of Fame class, reuniting him in spirit with Andre two decades after the Giant’s death.
White’s career is a reminder that referees do much more for professional wrestling than count the falls.
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