Mick Foley’s Street Fight with Triple H at Royal Rumble 2000 had a number of violent moments, and he recently recalled he didn’t have permission to use the thumbtacks in the bout. Foley faced off against the then-WWE World Heavyweight Champion as Cactus Jack in the match, and he recalled in a recent WWE Retrospective that he had been told not to use the tacks but did so anyway.
“If I did it without any crowd, TV camera, it would be one of the worst feelings in the world,” Foley said (per Wrestling Inc). “But when you get that response, the exact response you’re looking for, It can anesthetize the pain to a great degree.”
He continued, “We were under a strict edict, no thumbtacks. Triple H said, you have the tacks? I said, they’re already under the ring. We went with the “it’s better to do it and ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission” and the match was such a huge success that we didn’t even get yelled at.”
Triple H was able to retain the title in the match, and the feud between the two continued into No Way Out the next month where Foley put his career on the line against Triple H inside Hell in a Cell and lost (but then again came back for WrestleMania 2000).
