You can see when they first got on the cage that the support ties were popping off. Extremely possible it was a shoot.

Sadistic has spoken. There's no countering, Rob. ;)

For the record, shoot or not. I love the spot and I'm a massive Foley mark anyway, so it doesn't take anything away from me if it was planned or not. This is just a theory I've had for a while.

Just to add to the conspiracy theorists amongst us -

"If the spot was planned, did UT position himself on another section of the cell so that he wouldn't fall through as well? The chokeslam he gave Foley was executed so that he landed on a separate section of the cage. Typically, chokeslams are given so that the receipient is planted fairly close to the UT's feet. Yet the bump onto of the cell was given so that Foley landed on a separate section altogether, a considerable distance from the UT's grounding"

...on the other hand you could say that UT recognised that the cage was brittle and could give way if he were to slam Foley on the same section that he was also standing and putting pressure on also. So he did this for both his and Foley's safety.

But then again, if he was aware of this... why did he wish to chokeslam Foley at all?

Another possibility is that he was aiming for the center of one of the "cells" and didn't want to risk Foley landing on the frames. Both Taker and Mankind were sizable, so even though the frames are rather large, had he come close to slamming Foley down on one, it might've been disasterous.

It's possible the original outcome was just supposed to be a chokeslam, but the cage was not supposed to break. Maybe Foley was looking to see if he thought the cage would hold or not. :-\

No chance. They both knew the cage was unstable from the start even from walking around on the thing. Foley states in his Three Faces of Foley DVD that he and UT were under enough difficulty keeping themselves upright and the cage was surprisingly unstable in comparison to that used the year before at Bad Blood.

That's now my biggest concern. Since both Foley and Taker knew the cage was brittle and breakable, why did they go for the chokeslam anyway? Surely they could have predicted what might happen.

All you have to do is watch the start of the match and watch the cage clasps pop.

Yea i'll believe Foley. Just doesn't make much sense that he would take a bump that is more painful yet visually less pleasing the previous big bump. But then again the cage clamps did go back and to the left.