The Undertaker built one of the greatest careers in WWE history, but his legendary name almost turned out very differently.
From the moment he debuted in WWE, The Undertaker became a special attraction especially for WrestleMania. He went on to win world titles, main-event WrestleMania, and cement himself as a Hall of Famer.
His career highlights ranged from defeating legends like Hulk Hogan, Kane, Shawn Michaels, Triple H and more to his final match against AJ Styles in the cinematic Boneyard Match at WWE WrestleMania 36 in 2020.
However, before all of that happened, WWE nearly gave him another ring name. Speaking on Six Feet Under podcast, Bruce Prichard revealed that Mark Calaway was originally set to debut as Kane The Undertaker.
Prichard explained that the idea came together while WWE was finalizing the character’s look. “They sent over the drawings of different looks for you to be this dark character, and the coolest one was what we ended up with. He (Pat Patterson) goes, ‘He looks like an old fashioned Undertaker.'”
At the same time, Prichard was strongly pushing for the name Kane, inspired by biblical history. “And I was like yeah that’s great, but I wanted to call you Kane, because Kane (Cain) was the first man to commit murder. Kane killed his brother Abel. In many ways Kane was the most evil person in biblical lore, kills his own brother, first man to ever commit murder. And I just loved that name, cool strong name Kane.”
Bruce Prichard reveals why he thought The Undertaker needed the Kane name
Bruce Prichard mentioned for a short period, WWE actually moved forward with the full name. He said, “And so it was going to be Kane The Undertaker, that was the deal, you couldn’t get more evil than Kane. We were gonna go with that, we went three weeks with Kane, until we dropped it”
He added, “We did three weeks and then we did TV, that’s why I remember its three weeks because we did that whole TV’s as Kane The Undertaker. The next TV, which was three weeks later, we dropped the Kane and you were just The Undertaker. And I was like, ‘That’ll never get over.'” [H/T: ewrestlingnews.co]
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