Thanks to Grahame Herbert for this piece…
The Undertaker character is the stuff of legend in WWE, a twenty year veteran who has left a legacy of some of the greatest wrestling matches of all times.
He’s also proved to be a legend ‘behind the scenes’ too. Undertaker is the resident WWE locker room leader, a union figure of sorts who functions as the bridge between Vince McMahon and the wrestling crew. Whenever you hear former talent talk about the WWE, they always reference The Undertaker in tones of respect and appreciation.
Not to say he was always a good guy by any means… he was one of the key men in the backstage ‘wrestler court’ which hazed newer talent and dished out ‘punishment’ to those who betrayed the code of the locker room. Despite this, while the likes of ‘wrestling court’ veterans like JBL and Bob Holly caused resentment in younger wrestlers, Undertaker always remained as a figurehead they looked up to. He’s truly “the man” in WWE. This is at heart “one of the boys”, a wrestler who was right at it in the early 90′s during the height of hard partying and even harder wrestling.
Borrowing various backstage stories from collected ‘Undertaker shoot interviews’ at wrestlingforum.com, we have pulled together a mixture of the most intriguing, hilarious and shocking insights into The Deadman from over the years. Be prepared to meet a side of the man you may not have expected, with stories from the likes of Kevin Nash, Paul Bearer, Jake Roberts and Taker himself on the issue of being a “true hellraiser.”
10. Getting The Stomach Pumped In The Afternoon And Wrestling At Night
Jake the Snake Roberts describes his first ever meeting with Mark Calaway as one that centered around strip clubs and alcohol consumption.
“I love your work but I hear you know the greatest strip clubs in the world and I want to ride with you,” Taker apparently said to Jake.
The grizzled and heavy drinking Snake didn’t believe Taker would last a week travelling with him, but took him under his wing anyway. Just a week later and Taker was having his stomach pumped in the afternoon and wrestling on the evening as if nothing had ever happened. According to Jake it was as if Calaway didn’t even need to wear the Undertaker make-up any more given how whited out his face was from drinking.
In some ways this was pretty normal behavior for a wrestler in the industry back then. Large amounts of alcoholism was just a way to bond with ‘the boys’ and strippers were the cool thing to do back then on the road.
9. The Undertaker Fears Cucumbers
From a Paul Bearer shoot interview with Jim Cornette we now know that Undertaker fears cucumbers!
The story goes that Taker always used to travel with Bearer because it helped protect his gimmick. Being an old school kind of guy, Taker always protected kayfabe, and insisted on not being pictured out of character. As such, whenever Bearer and Taker travelled together, the manager was always the unlucky one who had to get out and fill the petrol.
One day when they stopped to fill up, Bearer was desperate for a pee. Taker showed no mercy and made his manager fill the tank first… which resulted in Bearer wetting his trousers. Undertaker found this hilarious and quickly spread the story to Vince McMahon and the locker room.
How did Bearer get his revenge? Aware of Undertaker’s bizarre phobia of cucumbers he proceeded to fill The Deadman’s hat with the vegetable, topping it up with the green right to the brim. When Taker picked the hat up and caught sight of the cucumbers he legitimately freaked out and gagged.
8. Undertaker In The Ghetto
Back in 1990 The Undertaker was travelling with Bruce Prichard (Brother Love) when they lost sight of their directions and stumbled into a rough neighborhood. The rental car which had Prichard driving up front stood out like a sore thumb, it wasn’t long before local eyebrows got raised.
Stopping to ask directions, the situation deteriorated, with the person who they asked turning out be a thug who was ready to get hostile. You can almost guess what happened next, the thug caught sight of the 300 pound 7 footer sat in the back. With Undertaker’s ghoulish face staring menacingly, the thug thought better of it and ran away in fear.
When it comes to Grand Theft Auto, better to stick to the video game, you don’t want to mess with The Deadman.
7. Kevin Nash On The Undertaker And Jack Daniel’s
The Undertaker’s drink of choice is Jack Daniel’s whiskey according to Kevin Nash who described it as a “love” for the drink.
Whether Taker still drinks to a large degree is unlikely, he had a huge beer belly in 2000, but in recent years look to be in decent shape (save for the injury woes). He may have in fact quit drinking entirely, remarking in the 2003 ‘WWE Unscripted’ book that his wife Sara showed him happiness without the need for drink… well, we all know how that ended up anyway.
Before Undertaker cleaned up his act, he was a hellraiser of a drinker according to Nash. Undertaker was known for being a party animal and would regularly take a limo with Nash and Charles Wright in which they would get drunk and cruise the local strip clubs in New York or Las Vegas. These drinking sessions would last all night… basically Nash and Taker loved strippers and whiskey.
6. The Undertaker’s Association With Porn Star Jenna Jameson
In her autobiography ‘How to make love like a porn star’, Jenna Jameson revealed that The Undertaker used to hang round with her when he was on the road in Las Vegas. Jameson was only 16 at the time and would watch on with shyness as the wrestling star visited the tattoo parlor she worked at. Supposedly they ended up hanging out and became good friends.
Jameson proved to be the perfect gullible mark for kayfabe. “Undertaker was one of the biggest WWF wrestlers at the time. He would put people in coffins and set them on fire in the ring. And the scary thing is, that character he played was not an act” she detailed in her book.
She goes on to reveal that The Undertaker was in fact scared of her and got creeped out by her hanging round the shop. Later on she talks about a time he came to one of her shows and chased off a guy who was trying to buy her a drink, “You can get me a shot of Jaeger and you can get yourself a shot of shut-the-f***up” he apparently barked at Jameson’s suitor.
The Deadman then tried to woo Jenna, telling her “I’m going to kick your boyfriend’s ass and take you away with me.”
She recalls that “I knew he was serious. I ran upstairs and told Jordan we had to leave, because this guy was going to beat the f*** out of him and kidnap me. So I never saw him again.”
5. Acid And Justin Credible
Justin Credible has recounted that his first ever experience of acid was with The Undertaker on a flight to Europe. Once Credible started ‘tripping’ he was freaked out by The Undertaker making cat movements and hissing at him. Another version of this event says that Undertaker stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyes back to intimidate Justin. In his hallucinating state Credible says he almost had a heart attack as he beheld Undertaker’s devil like appearance.
This is quite a funny story in that it shows Taker was down in the trenches with the lower talent and was laid-back enough to have some fun. It also shows that there was quite the drug culture in the WWF at this time, to a point where dropping acid was a trivial game between two wrestlers. That’s a negative thing, but that was the wrestling world back then. Credible’s shoot interview wasn’t admonishing Taker for what happened, it was praising him for being ‘one of the boys’.
4. Choking Out Kurt Angle For Real
Kurt Angle recounts an Undertaker story in his WWE autobiography ‘It’s true, it’s true’.
Angle had been playing around for weeks with Vince McMahon in a game where they would take the other man down by surprise. Much to the Chairman’s delight he had actually managed to score a takedown over Kurt and wouldn’t let it go – he reminded Angle of it on every occasion he could.
It was all good natured, but the Olympic gold medalist wanted revenge, he started to plot a surprise ‘play attack’ on the boss. The time to execute his own takedown came during a plane ride to Europe. Spotting the boss unawares, Kurt pounced on Vince like a cat… little did he know the can of worms he had opened. The Chairman spent the entirety of the rest of the plane ride waiting to jump Kurt back and eventually did in a takedown that spilled out into the aisle as a fun play fight.
One man who had been unaware of all of this was The Undertaker, who was literally a sleeping giant. The scuffle continued and Taker was awoke by the commotion, reacting with shock to what he thought was his boss getting beat up. He reacted the only way he naturally would – jumping on Kurt and applying a chokehold which was seconds away from putting the star to sleep!
Luckily Vince explained the situation before Angle’s lights went out and they all had a good laugh about it.
3. The Back Stage Krew
One of Undertaker’s most distinctive tattoo’s is the B.S.K Pride one across his abdomen.
It was actually a drunken etching Taker got done one night when hanging out with other wrestlers and joking about forming an alternative backstage group to Shawn Michaels’s kliq. The ‘backstage krew’ was born, consisting of Taker, Yokozuna, Charles Wright, and others. This has been confirmed in shoot interviews from Nash, X Pac and Paul Bearer.
The group was more a bit of fun and camaraderie compared to the real power of the kliq. Undertaker was actually good friends with Kevin Nash, so it wasn’t like he was trying to rival the kliq or take a dig at them. This was just a fun way to send a message to the kliq that there were other things going on backstage in the WWF.
The decision to get the drunken tattoo might be one Taker regretted given that the group had no real lasting infamy, but still, it looks pretty badass to this day.
2. His Blatant Disregard To The WWF Rules On Strip Clubs
One thing that’s strikingly obvious in old stories about Undertaker is how much he enjoyed boozing and strippers. Kevin Nash tells another story in a shoot interview in which he mentions Undertaker betrayed Vince McMahon on a strip club rule.
Basically there had been some sort of problem where Vince banned his crew from strip clubs due to an altercation there had been. It was seen as a negative to the family company image, so the Chairman basically barred everyone from going. Kevin Nash loved strippers, so he decided ‘screw it’ and just went anyway.
Trying to keep a low profile, Nash entered a strip club and looked for a dark corner… but who does he see as he’s looking around? A big man in a motorcycle jacket is looking shiftily back at him. That’s right, The Undertaker was one step ahead of Nash and had already gone ahead and broke Vince’s rule.
“I see you listened,” they both said to each other.
1. Taping His Fists Up And Threatening Shawn Michaels
The most infamous backstage story about Undertaker is always going to be the occasion he taped his fists up and threatened violence against Shawn Michaels.
Taker did this because he had got sick and tired of seeing Shawn mess around with WWF business. The Heartbreak Kid had pulled out of a planned loss to Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13 due to an injury (which some believe he faked), he later went on to ‘screw’ Bret Hart at Survivor Series 1997 in what was a shock to the entire locker room. By conspiring with Vince to change a result without his opposition knowing, Michaels had betrayed the entire locker room – Undertaker was legitimately furious.
When it came to WrestleMania 14 it was the turn of Steve Austin to get a run with the WWF title. Austin was the hottest thing going and a genuine shot for the WWF to become a financial success again. Would Michaels do the right thing and put the star over? Undertaker as locker room leader was taking no chances. He got in Michaels face and showed his fists, letting the egotistical star know that if he did anything other than put Austin over he would face the consequences.
The result went off without a hitch: Michaels lost to Austin clean and the most successful era in the business was started.
