In a conversation where he was reminiscing about his past on his podcast, Talk is Jericho, Chris disclosed how Vince McMahon approached him and Triple H about an idea he had for their Hell in a Cell match at Judgement Day 2002, inspired by watching Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie. In his pitch, Vince proposed that at the end of the match, the two wrestlers shoot webs onto the roof of the cage and move up there to finish the match. Fortunately, the idea was never actualized, and the match proceeded with Chris Jericho and Triple H brawling on top of the cell with a 2×4 wrapped in barbed wire. Triple H later walked away with a victory after hitting Y2J with the Pedigree. We’ll never know if Vince McMahon was serious about the idea, but as Chris Jericho put it, it’s never going to happen since they were not mutants. So we said, let’s make this match a bridge to where people don’t expect to have someone fall off every time. Because sooner or later, you can’t do that all the time, you know? So then we thought well why don’t we do the finish on top of the cage? Hmm, that’s interesting and hadn’t been done at that point in time, right. And I remember when I pitched the idea, we pitched the idea to Vince, he’s like ‘Well, the idea of Hell in a Cell is nobody can get out of the door. How are you going to get up there? And then think, well, maybe we can crawl up the inside? Vince said ‘Well, there’s not a hole in the top of the cage and how you going to crawl across?’ And the Vince goes ‘Why don’t you take your arms and shoot some web to the top of the cage and slide up there?’ Like what? Triple H goes ‘He went and saw Spider-Man last night. Can you imagine Vince McMahon at the movies? Imagine you’re at the movies and you see Vince sitting there. I remember once I asked him if he wanted to go to AC/DC with me at the garden. And he’s like [undecided] and I’m like, what if he says yes? He’s going to show up in a suit. What Is he going to do? He couldn’t make it thankfully. Anyway, so we couldn’t use a spider’s webs because we’re not mutants. A gimmick strongly associated with The Undertaker, the debut Hell in a Cell match, which was billed to be “hell on earth,” saw Shawn Michaels go up against The Undertaker. Regarded as one of the best WWE matches, The Undertaker’s half-brother Kane made his debut by meddling in the match and using the Tombstone, The Undertaker’s signature move, to defeat his brother, thus granting Shawn Michaels the victory and making him the number-one contender for the WWF Championship.
