The Undertaker is featured in a new interview with Pastor Ed Young called ‘Out Of Character’ where he goes in-depth about his life and career.
During the conversation, Taker talks about how he made the character the focus in his wrestling rather than an extravagant moveset and how he and Michelle McCool began dating one another as well as being re-introduced to God and his Faith. Quotes from the interview are below:
The Undertaker on how he handled his wrestling style and why he connected with the audience:
“What my process was, was like I have to have people invested in what I’m doing. They have to care about whether or not I’m getting my teeth kicked in. They have to be invested in that character. Wrestling is not about doing flips. Wrestling is you’re telling a story and you use the wrestling moves to help tell the story. It’s not about the moves like you said in your opening there, it’s the battle of good and evil.”
“Overall, it was all about longevity and keeping people, you know you have to keep finger on the pulse [of what the audience wants].”
“The body is not made to take that kind of punishment. Everybody has all their preconceived ideas of what wrestling is – the human body is not made to take that. Especially when you figure you’re doing for 250, 270 days a year over a stretch of time, you can only imagine that things are going to happen, but that was the way I approached it.”
Undertaker gets choked up talking about his wife Michelle McCool until a fan makes a run-in for the save:
“Obviously, I’ve always knew and believed in God, I just didn’t lead my life that way. I’ve never put a lot in being a celebrity. That just kind of flies right over my head you know, cause that’s just not really who I am. But as you can imagine, you get exposed to a lot of different things because of what you do and I lived a pretty excessive lifestyle. I believed in God, but I wasn’t living my life for God. and somehow or another, I’m met the (I’m actually getting a little choked up) she’s [McCool] awesome. [Audience member shouts, “love you, Mark!”] I love you too. Thank you, I needed that. I needed that save right there. I was about to lose my whole character.”
On meeting and dating Michelle for the first time:
“So when she got there there was was two people she didn’t want to meet: Kane and yours truly. Terrified. Did not want anything to do with me. It was funny because she has this unbelievable work ethic, you know? So she’d get to the arenas early and try to get around some of our producers, our agents…So she would pick their brains and try to get them to get in the ring and work with her and it just caught my eye. And I was like, ‘no you never cross over that line.’ And I always told guys, ‘you don’t date people that you work with. It’s just not going to work.’ I said it for years and then I broke my own motto. But anyway I ended up getting to know her and you know, I was just like ‘wow, she is really passionate about this.’ You could tell that is was genuinely this was what she wanting to do. It wasn’t a stair step to Hollywood or anything else. She was passionate. So finally after a long time of her chasing me around (not true at all). Finally she realized that I was not Satan.”
On her pushing him to go to church with her:
“She wanted me to be the man that I could be and that has nothing to do with me being The Undertaker and so I went. It was just the perfect circumstance at the perfect time. She pushed me and I went reluctantly. I grew up Catholic and you know so I’m thinking to myself, ‘oh man, I don’t want to kneel I don’t want to get down on the pew.’ After 17 surgeries you can figure my body doesn’t really feel good all the time.”
“It was more like a conversation, you know? I found myself from being kind of tense and pensive to kind of leaning being more like, ‘wow, this is kind of cool.’ And that started my journey to leading my life back the way it should. Michelle, I can’t wait for you to meet her one day. She is a very strong woman and she had to be and she is the one that put me in the right place for me to get my life back on track again to what really matters and obviously I’m indebted to that and not even counting how she’s an awesome mom…she brings the best out of me.”
Check out the full interview below:
(Transcription credit to Dominic DeAngelo for Wrestlezone.com)
