The Undertaker says asking if he should’ve retired after his WrestleMania XXX loss to Brock Lesnar is the “million dollar question” but he doesn’t even remember the match due to having a concussion.
Undertaker was the guest on last night’s debut of Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions and was talking about his respective losses to Roman Reigns and Lesnar at WrestleMania. Taker says his WrestleMania 33 sendoff was more meaningful than a retirement speech and in that moment, he knew he wasn’t coming back.
He explained that he got talked back into coming back (something he joked about always changing his mind about retirement later in the show) before the conversation moved on to Austin asking why he didn’t retire after ‘The Streak’ ended three years earlier at WrestleMania XXX in New Orleans. Taker says it might have been a good time to potentially retire, but he doesn’t even remember the night because he’d been concussed about five minutes into the match.
“I don’t even remember this night. I mean, I’ve watched it back now, I obviously know. My last memory that I can definitely tell you happened at about 3:30 in the afternoon when my wife came backstage and we had a conversation. That’s the last thing that I remember on my own of that day,” Undertaker said.
“At this point in my career, there’s a huge process of me getting ready between the stretching, visiting the doctors, doing everything that I have to do to get myself ready to go out and perform. It’s gone. And when I say process, we’re talking about an hour, hour and a half process that’s just completely gone.” Undertaker said. “My memory picks up, I want to say 4:30, 5:00 in the morning when I’m in the hospital. They’re coming to check on me every few minutes to ask me my name and I’ve got no clue.
Austin asks if he went to the hospital after WM30 and Taker confirms, explaining that he walked backstage and sat down, and the next thing he remembers is being in the hospital but he had no clue what had happened or basic information like his name or birthday.
“The one thing I remembered was my wife’s first name and I got to the point where they’d come in and asked me where I was at and I have no clue where I’m at,” Undertaker said, “no idea what my birthday is. So they leave and I call her over, ‘hey, come here. Where am I?’ [laughs] And she’s like ‘I’m not going to cheat for you on this, you have to remember this on your own.’ I’m getting hot at her because she won’t tell me where the hell I’m at and I’ve got no clue.”
“I’ve watched it back 10, 15 times now. I can’t pick out where it happened. It was nothing Brock did. I think him not knowing that I was concussed, and I kept taking belly-to-back suplexes,” Undertaker said, “but that’s not on him because I was still moving. Watching it, I can tell that I’m lethargic and I’m not moving and thinking like I would be normally.”
Undertaker went on to say this screwed up his confidence in himself and said that he was in shape and went through training, but doesn’t think his body was ready for the trauma. He says the simplest bump ‘rung his bell’ and used an analogy from Dr. Joseph Maroon about how it was like a lamp that unplugged. Undertaker says eventually it became a personal issue for him and said he didn’t want to retire with a match that he couldn’t remember.
Check out the full episode at this link.
