The Undertaker had one of the longest and most respected careers in WWE history, but he wasn’t above breaking the rules and asking for forgiveness later. On a recent episode of the Mic Check with Mr. Anderson podcast, The Phenom shared two stories about deliberately disobeying directives from Vince McMahon.
The Banned Piledriver
During a pay-per-view match, Undertaker called for his opponent, Ken Anderson, to deliver a piledriver, a move that had been banned by WWE for safety reasons. “The only people that were supposed to do any kind of piledrivers was myself and Kane, because I think we kind of got grandfathered in after Steve [Austin] got hurt,” Undertaker explained.
He knew it was against the rules, but felt the moment called for it. “It popped in, it was like, ‘Yep, that’s what I need right now,'” he said. He recalled Vince McMahon’s reaction backstage: “I know that you didn’t call that,” Vince said to Anderson, before turning his attention to the Deadman. “He knew where it come from. And you know, there’s just times you know with him that I would have to do things and then ask for forgiveness later.”
The WrestleMania Chair Shot
A more costly incident occurred during one of his WrestleMania matches with Triple H. At the time, WWE had a strict “no chair shots to the head” policy. He and Triple H felt their match needed one to achieve the level of physicality they wanted, and decided to do it anyway.
“Surely we can do it. We can get [away with it],” Undertaker recalled thinking. “Came back, and he again, he wasn’t like, he wasn’t hot, but he, you could tell he was hot… The conversation was really condensed.” The real punishment came later. “Where it came back was, is when I got paid for it, and there was that big minus. He fined the shit out of us… As soon as I got my check… I’m looking, I’m like, ‘Holy shit.’ I called Paul [Triple H] right away. I said, ‘Hey, man, you got your Mania check?’ And he goes, ‘Yep.’ And I was like, ‘Did you get a big… fine too?’ And he went, ‘Yep.’ I was like, ‘Son of a bitch.'”
Check out the entire interview below.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Mic Check with Ken Anderson with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
