The Undertaker changed the way he delivered the Tombstone because the way he did it at the start was not safe, and he says the first man to take one had every right to complain about it.
Early in his WWF run, the move looked different. Undertaker would pick opponents up with their legs hanging out to one side rather than squared against his shoulders. Asked on Insight with Chris Van Vliet why it changed, he was straightforward about the reason.
“Well, one, I really didn’t know how to do it right the first. It’s just like, you know, I’m just dumb, young, and just grabbing guys up, and they’re hanging over here on the side, and eventually I got them squared up, and it was much easier to control their body weight and land safer and land square.”
Asked whether there were bad ones, he named the first.
“Oh yeah, there was early on. There was some pretty bad tombstones, and it’s crazy because I really pride myself on not hurting people. But you can go back. Koko B. Ware took a hellacious one that I kind of blew off when it happened. I was like, come on, man, just suck it up. And then I watched it back years later, and I was like, oh, maybe he had a reason to b*tch about that because that looked gnarly.”
That was Undertaker’s on-camera debut. He arrived at Survivor Series on November 22, 1990, in Hartford as the mystery member of Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Team and eliminated Koko about a minute in with the first tombstone he had ever thrown. Koko has said since that he was dropped on his head and that the two had not practiced the move beforehand. He has also said he holds nothing against Undertaker, and the pair have talked about it in the years since.
The change was about survival as much as safety, given how often he was working.
“It’s a safer way, and not only is it a safer way, but it was a more efficient way to do it. We’re on the road 20, 25 days out of the month. You have to figure out ways to minimize the trauma, and how to take care of yourself.”
“And it was very difficult to not break somebody’s neck. When all their body weight is making a hard right, once I figured out how to get them lined up, it was better for them and it was a lot easier for me.”
