The Undertaker thinks he’d still be suiting up and chokeslamming people if it was up to Vince McMahon.
Ariel Helwani of WWE on BT Sport recently spoke with The Undertaker about his “American Bad Ass” era. The Undertaker moved away from the “Deadman“ and “Phenom” characters at the end of the Attitude Era, a decision he believes was a beneficial one.
“Yeah, I don’t think in that time period, as cool as that Undertaker character is or was. I think it would have really struggled in the Attitude Era because you’re kind of handcuffed in what you can do, right? You’ve got all these guys cutting these incredible promos, and everything’s kind of up in the air. There’s not much of a, I mean, if you think it, you could pretty much say it during the Attitude Era,” he said.
“I always felt like it was gonna be really difficult for me to stay in the confines of what The Undertaker did and try and cut promos against The Rock or Stone Cold or all those guys,” he noted, “because it was just the wild wild west right then. So I had to take the parameters off so that I could hang and be relevant with that whole new fan base that we got all of a sudden out of that.”
The Undertaker also spoke about Vince McMahon’s feelings about The American Bad Ass character at first, adding that Vince probably never saw him retiring, either.
“He liked it. I think initially just this for the sake of change and everything, but no, I mean, he loved his Undertaker, man. His old school Undertaker. He never envisioned me leaving, you know, retiring. If it would have been up to him, I’d still be out there, at least chokeslamming somebody now and then,” he stated. “I just don’t think he ever thought the day would come where I would say yeah, I’m done.”
The Undertaker officially announced his retirement from professional wrestling in June 2020, and he was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame in 2022. Since then, he appeared at RAW Is XXX in January 2023 as the “American Bad Ass” character.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit WWE on BT Sport with a link back to this article for the transcription.
