With the Undertaker’s Final Farewell approaching, the legendary WWE figure recently spoke with Yahoo! Sports about his career, the legacy he’s leaving, and much more. You can check out some of the highlights below:
On his incredibly rare, long career:
I don’t think in our industry, these kinds of careers don’t happen often, It was kind of hard to imagine going for 30 straight years with one company. You don’t envision that when you first start out. You hope you can catch on a little bit, have a run, build momentum where if you have to go somewhere else, like Japan or another promotion you are in good shape. I never planned on going back to WCW once I got to WWE, but I knew Japan and other places, I could have built a strong name and maybe go back and forth.
On beating Hulk Hogan at 26-years-old:
That was a fast year. It all happened really fast and then I got the word at Survivor Series, my one-year anniversary, that I am going to be wrestling the golden goose and I’m going to be world champion, It was amazing. A year into this thing, I’m still looking at myself kind of as a greenhorn. That’s how it was back then. I had only been in the business for about four years and here I am, wrestling one of the biggest legends our industry has ever seen and I’m going over. It was really surreal.
You’re nervous, then when you do the walkout that night it threw me off because it was like 60-40 the crowd was behind me, I was the babyface. Here I am trying to be this killer, this scary dude, and you come out and the crowd is leaning toward you. You have to put that out of your mind so you can do business and be what you’re supposed to be, but it was amazing.
On “The Last Ride” docuseries:
I think a lot of people saw this invincible character and what this year has done is given an air of vulnerability to me, It really wasn’t my original goal, but I do think it encapsulates how important it was for me to be the Undertaker for our fans. From the time that we start the doc, I think it shows what it took me physically to go out and honor that. That was the gist of where we took the story, how important it was for me to go out and perform and it was a natural segway into the person.
