Edge and Mick Foley really pushed each other to their limits in 2006.
The pair met at WrestleMania 22 seeking very different things. Edge was looking to really assert himself as a main event player and become a world champion.
He was just starting to get red-hot thanks to his real-life affair with Lita coming to life onscreen, too.
Foley was at the total other end of the spectrum. A three-time world champion who initially retired in 2000, but much like The Undertaker did until the end of his career last year, he found himself chasing the perfect send off years after he should have.
From 1999 to 2006, Foley had become the king of making a legit main eventer.
The Rock in 1999, Triple H in 2000 and Randy Orton in 2004 can all thank Foley for helping them reach the next level in their career.
WWE hoped the Hardcore Legend could sprinkle some of that rarefied stardust on Edge at WrestleMania 22 and the blossoming Rated-R Superstar, a man no stranger to danger in a WWE ring, seized the opportunity.
The match had a ton of brutal spots involving chairs and thumbtacks. But the match is famous for the flaming table Edge speared Foley through at the climax.
“I didn’t think it through too much, Edge told Inside the Ropes. “Here’s the thing, if you saw me do something idiotic like that, it was my idea.”
Edge wanted to put his name on the map and while he’d had an iconic WrestleMania moment when he speared Jeff Hardy off the ladder at WrestleMania 17 during TLC II, he needed one as a singles guy.
WWE were starting to move away from some of the high violence of the Attitude Era and the Ruthless Aggression era.
The PG era, as it were, was a couple of years away meaning Edge and Foley’s moment of violence is one of the last salvos in WWE.
They had to get plenty of measures in place to convince Vince McMahon they could do it safely and that meant some plants in the crowd.
“It had to be done in front of fire marshals, there were tests done and there were at least six fire marshals in the audience in the case that anything went wrong, but it was deemed safe and we did it. We pitched it and the powers that be went for it.”
While WWE is scripted and they try to make it as safe as possible, there’s only so much you can do when you’re playing with fire.
Edge says WWE equipped both men with fire-resistant gel, but their sweat wore it off and they suffered burns.
“I don’t have a shirt on, I am diving face-first into this thing. He’s going into it on his back with 18 layers of clothes on.
“They put this flame retardant gel on us which was washed off within two minutes. I dove through, and tuck my head into Mick’s belly and hoped for the best.
“But I wrapped my hands around him, so it burnt my arms, singed a lot of hair off my arms and chunk of my hair on the head and I rolled off and I just saw my body smoking.
“I was trying to make it look like shock, but I was smelling my own burnt flesh.
“It’s only in this industry that you could possibly have two men covered in blood, thumbtacks stuck in their backs and kneecaps, who have just burned each other, but they love each other.
“Rolling over to Mick, I put my arm on him, and I went, ‘I love you, Mickster,’ and he goes, ‘I love you too, Edgester.'”
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