The Undertaker says he came close enough to leaving for WCW that he thought about it seriously, and that one thing kept him where he was.
Asked on the latest episode of Six Feet Under how near he came to jumping, the WWE Hall of Famer described a company in trouble.
“We were going through such an incredibly difficult time. They were down there doing really cutting edge stuff, more mature, I guess, for no better term, mature storylines and stuff that was much more mainstream. And we were, and I know this will sound funny coming from a character, but we had these really just over the top characters that weren’t really resonating well with the audience, and again, business was horrible. The direction at the time was horrible.”
The approach came from a friend.
“I remember talking with Kevin Nash. He’s like, Mark, you need to make that jump now. Like, you know, I think you can, this is the kind of money they’re handing out, and I think you could do well down here.”
He did not dismiss it.
“I was like, I listened to it. I would be lying if I didn’t think like, wow, that’s, again, we’re working at the time 20, 25 days a month and barely making enough money to survive. It was difficult, and I knew that they were down there giving money away just so that talent wouldn’t be available to WWE, and so I listened, and honestly, I considered it.”
What stopped him was something that had been said to him earlier in his career, before WWE.
“At the end of the day, and although the same people weren’t in charge at WCW at this point, I’ll never forget being told that you’ll never draw money in this business. That really struck a nerve with me. And the one guy that believed in giving me a chance, because Vince wasn’t completely sold on me either, but the one guy that gave me a chance was Vince and the WWE. That meant more to me than the instant money that I could have made, which could have got me out of debt and all of those things.”
“Vince believed in me, and I felt obligated to stand by him even when business was so bad. But I knew that we could turn it around, and I just said, you know what, it’s a great deal, but I just can’t. I can’t do it. I got to stay here, and I got to be part of something that’s going to be huge. And that’s what I believed, and that’s exactly what ended up happening.”
The Undertaker spent his entire full-time career with WWE, debuting at Survivor Series in 1990 and working for the company for three decades.
