Undertaker Explains His Role In The Montreal Screwjob

With the Undertaker’s new propensity to speak candidly about his career out of character, there is an opportunity to gain a new perspective on lots of momentous moments in wrestling history. One of the most covered online is the Montreal Screwjob, in which Undertaker played a big role backstage. Speaking as part of a longer interview, Taker went through his recollection of the night in great detail:

So, you know, at that time Bret and I, we still are, we’re pretty close. Bret’s radar was up like he felt like something might go down and so I was kind of working my way around like I kept asking Earl Hebner and I was like “Hey you anything going on?” Every time I ask him, it was no, because I don’t think he found out till late, really late, what was gonna happen. But yeah, so I’m just kind of, you know, just keeping my ears and my radar was up, “Like okay, what’s gonna happen here? Is anything gonna happen?”

And then it was getting close to the match time and this is one place where I let my guard down someone said: “Hey, why don’t you go watch the match from Vince’s office?” And so I think “okay, that’s you know, that’s fine.” So I went back, it was sitting in Vince’s office watching, you know watching the match and then all went down. All hell breaks loose, you know. And I ended up working my way to Bret’s locker room. And you know, just like I cannot believe that this happened. And finally, I went I left there and I went to get Vince. Vince has got to address this to Bret and so I left there and was going to Vince’s office.

Vince is already on his way, you know, he was already on his way to come talk to Bret about it. Of course, all the boys are you know in an uproar, and what I kind of did was like, “All right, this is bad enough as it is. A lot of you guys that it doesn’t affect doesn’t matter needs to stay the hell out of here.” Right, so there are a lot of people I didn’t let in the dressing room.

Taker continued that many of Bret’s confidants were let in the room, sitting on one side opposite of Vince, Shane McMahon, Pat Patterson, and Bruce Prichard. Taker said that Shawn was also there, but he took him to the far end away from the two groups.

I knew at some point he was going to chime in and that wasn’t going to help anything. So they’re going back and forth, Vince is trying to explain his position. Bret’s, you know, giving his thoughts on what he did and basically said: “I’m gonna go in here. I’m gonna shower. I’m gonna get dressed if you’re still here, I’m gonna knock you out. Kind of a deal and that’s basically they talk, he showered, he got dressed, they got up and you know Vince said, “I’m gonna give you one.”

To this day, I cannot figure out how that punch got through so many people. It was like, I really, I don’t know because there were so many people in there and they weren’t like face to face but in that punch got through he hit Vince, Vince went down, and that was it.

The hosts try to get Undertaker to confirm Bret’s story that he hit Vince with an uppercut, but Taker would only confirm that the magic punch was a right hand. The next question is an interesting tangent, where Undertaker says he would have been happy to help take the title from Bret and avoid the entire nasty business.

I definitely could have and, the next day, I was really pissed that it got to that point. I didn’t show up to TV the next day until really late because I didn’t know if I was going to TV the next day. Mick didn’t go, and it was late in the day before I decided to go, I decided I got to go find out what happened here and why I was done this way.

My point being was like, you should have switched me. You should have put me in the match somehow with Bret. I’m sure Bret would have dropped it to me and I could have dropped it to Shawn right after that. There was a different way to do it, but Vince had to cover his bases.

For more from the interview, including how the Screwjob led to Undertaker’s role as a locker room leader, be sure to check out the full clip below: