5 Revelations From Undertaker On Joe Rogan

Wrestling fans and the millions of Joe Rogan Experience listeners who are NOT professional wrestling fans have had a couple weeks to digest Mark “The Undertaker” Calloway’s appearance on the show. There’s been a lot for fans to unpack from the near three-hour conversation, but we here at The Wrestling Estate are going to do our best to unpack everything that was said. Here are the five biggest revelations from The Undertaker’s recent appearance on JRE.

Buzz Sawyer Screwed The Undertaker

Prior to a couple of years ago, very little was known about The Undertaker’s beginning in professional wrestling. We knew Taker had been trained by Buzz Sawyer, but we didn’t really get a ton of insight as to what that was like until it was talked about on Rogan. Sawyer is obviously as old school as it got back in those days, having worked his way up through the Mid-Atlantic and surrounding territories, so his training methods aren’t unlike anything we’ve heard from the likes of Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat. The whole goal of this base training method was to weed out the weak and teach the aspiring wrestlers who proved tough enough, but Undertaker theorizes that Sawyer’s goal all along was to get his money. Taker even took out a loan from his older brother in order to pay for the training. However, when he returned to Sawyer’s house to continue training, The Undertaker found that Sawyer’s house had been vacated with the exception of his two dogs. Of course, not wanting to leave empty handed, Taker took the dogs as his own.

Years later, Taker revealed he had a dressing room interaction with Sawyer and confronted him on what he did. Sawyer claimed to not have any recollection, but asked The Undertaker if he’d like to do anything about it. Taker said he had made it work and he was “good,” but that didn’t stop him from thinking about what could have been.

“I remember one night I had a chance,” The Undertaker said. “I don’t know, sometimes I think I should’ve took it. I was looking out my hotel window, and [by] this hotel there was a Waffle House. I was looking out my window, I could see in the Waffle House, I could see him. He was by himself, he was all fucked up, he was all pilled up, you could tell, he was bobbing. I’m thinking, ‘Fuck, I could go hide behind a car right now and just fucking tee off on him.’”

Dallas

While The Deadman had revealed in past interviews his first match on a professional wrestling show that mattered was against none other than Bruiser Brody, there were so many more revelations made on this podcast as to how The Undertaker got a shot in Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling in Dallas.

For eight months, a young Mark Callaway would sit in the lobby of the WCCW offices (Wednesday was payday) and make small talk with referee Bronko Lubich, hoping somebody would take notice of him and book him on a show. Eight months came and went without anybody of any kind of pull having taken notice. However, on perhaps the last day he committed to spend in the Dallas offices, someday came suddenly for The Deadman.

“One day, I was right at the end of my rope,” The Undertaker said. “I was like, ‘Fuck this, I’m not getting anywhere here,’ and Fritz Von Erich, the patriarch of the family, the guy that owned the company, came in. He walked in and he stopped, and he looked at me. Once again, I started to get up and introduce myself, and he turned around and went into Bronko’s office. He had a deep gravelly voice and I could hear him, he’s like, ‘Who’s that kid out there?’ ‘Ah, he’s been coming here for months, he’s just trying to get booked’. I heard Fritz go, ‘Book him, book him Friday night. I want to see what he can do, he looks just like David’ – one of his sons that he’d just lost. I looked a lot like David, and that’s how I got my first break, because I was in the right place at the right time.”

The young Callaway went on to face Bruiser Brody on his first night in Dallas. The two worked a typical sounding match between a stiff, grizzled vet and an oversized beginner, but Brody saw potential in The Undertaker, and may have been the first to see it. He gave a glowing review to the Von Erichs after the match, telling them “the kid is going to be something.” As a fan, it makes you wonder what Frank Goodish could have contributed to pro wrestling outside the ring, as this is just another story of how shrewd Bruiser Brody was beyond the body of work he put in as a wrestler. As for The Undertaker, the man has lived a charmed life and career to this point, and this story is no exception to that. It’s one that is mandatory telling when it comes to understanding the man’s life and career.

Joining the Service

One interesting revelation from the podcast was that The Undertaker admitted he probably would have joined the military had his career in WWE not panned out. He mentioned how inspired he was by people who have served our country and that not joining the military might be his one regret in life. He also referenced how at this point in his life he doesn’t really get starstruck from meeting fellow celebrities, but that he was really excited to meet veterans such as John “Tig” Tiegen and Marcus Luttrell as he could listen to guys like that tell stories all day.

This is something that, while not necessarily surprising, we haven’t really heard The Undertaker elaborate on before, and it’s definitely interesting to think how close he may have been to visiting his local recruiter and signing his life away. It makes sense, given some of his blue-collar interests, that something like the military and stories from ex-Navy SEALs would be something that interests The Undertaker. To hear him mention not joining the service as his one potential regret in one of the most fulfilled lives professional wrestling has ever seen is pretty jarring, though.

Injuries

Part of the mystique behind The Undertaker was how under wraps the man kept everything at all times. Injuries were no exception. Some, like the accident with King Mabel that led to him wearing a mask, have been well documented. However, The Undertaker shed light on some of the lesser known injuries he’s sustained, as well as some of the medical miracles he needed to keep his career alive.

One story he told specifically relating to Brian “Crush” Adams was particularly memorable. The two were military pressing 315 lbs. on a squat rack, but when The Undertaker swapped to a 415 lb. bench, he tore his pectoral muscle off the bone on the second rep while Adams, who was spotting him, was off talking to a guy in the corner of the room. But it doesn’t end here. The Undertaker also reveals the manner in which he found out Mabel had busted his eye socket back in 1995. Crazier, is that he actually blew both eye sockets out over the course of his career, leaving him with double vision for the rest of his life. The injury in question occurred when Rey Mysterio hit him with a springboard seated senton that visibly shattered The Undertaker’s nose. That’s not all, however. The move, which The Deadman chalked up to a “freak accident,” also took out his other eye socket.

“It was a freak accident with Rey Mysterio because he’s so tiny,” The Undertaker said. “He just jumped off the top — I should know the move, but I don’t– I broke my nose. I set it, too. So that was me grabbing it. I was straightening my nose out. So, I grabbed my nose right away and I could feel that it was way over to the side, so I squeezed it back straight, but there was three of them. That one was just way back in the cone, it wasn’t as severe as the first one, but after the second one, it left me with double-vision. Like if I try to look peripherally, you become opaque. I see two, like I see two lights when I look like that, to this day and it’s been over 10 years.”

Many pro wrestling injury horror stories have come to light over the years, such as Owen Hart breaking Steve Austin’s neck and Yoshitatsu breaking his neck on AJ Styles’ Styles Clash (and also the time AJ saved James Ellsworth’s neck in a similar spot on SmackDown), but none are perhaps as unique as The Undertaker and the double vision caused by not one, but two blown eye sockets. It’s tough to even imagine, but I for one am glad it hasn’t become a major hindrance on his life post-wrestling.

Modern Wrestling

Now, for the main event of this piece, and one of the most talked about topics in wrestling today: The Undertaker’s take on modern wrestling. Truthfully, this topic was more or less glossed over on the show, as although comedian and rabid wrestling fan Tony Hinchcliffe was also on the program, Rogan isn’t exactly a “smart mark.” Of course, The Deadman’s comments didn’t escape the fans – or the talent for that matter. He called the modern product “soft” and went on to say the following:

“In that era of guys, too, those were men. You go into a dressing room nowadays and it’s a lot different. I remember walking into my first real dressing room, and all I saw were some crusty fucking men. Half of them had guns and knives in their bags. Shit got handled back then. Now you walk in, there’s guys playing video games and fucking making sure they look pretty. It’s evolution, I guess. I don’t know what it is, but I just like those eras, man. I liked when men were men.”

Many of the top stars in WWE were offended by these comments, as were many fans, but to those who were, I would suggest they take a long look in the mirror and take the comments as nothing more or less than a challenge by one of the most respected wrestlers of his time. I don’t see anything wrong with his comments, and Taker actually made some good points.

The wrestlers of today are a product of the times, and that’s both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, personal wellness in professional wrestling has never been more advanced or accessible. Eventually, we’ll begin to see a cliff with all the drug and alcohol-related deaths in the industry, and the old and tired stigma that pro wrestlers are a caravan of reckless addicts and drunks will begin to go away. That said, it is not arguable that the modern product pales in comparison to the WWE of previous years. Monday Night Raw is objectively one of the worst shows you’ll find on a Monday night, let alone its standing among pro wrestling shows on cable. Obviously, much of the reason for this falls on the creative process behind the show, but at what point do the talent have to own some of the blame as well? No, I don’t think Undertaker’s message is that you need to have guns and knives in your bag or be a “crusty fucking man” to be entertaining. But there once existed a mindset that is no longer there.

I don’t know how this gets fixed. Mindsets are something one either has or does not have, but it’s not my job to instill that. I’m merely offering that perhaps The Undertaker’s comments were taken a bit out of context. I do not believe he suggested at any point that the modern WWE wrestler wasn’t tough or didn’t have grit or talent. But the quality of Raw has never been lower, and in fact, it has seen a steady decline for a number of years now. Don’t believe me? Check the ratings.

I don’t think the answer needs to be that wrestlers can’t play video games in the locker room or that they need to carry guns and knives on them or drink people under a table, but everybody involved needs to ask themselves how they can be part of the solution, because the product is absolutely soft, and I for one can understand where The Undertaker was coming from with those words.

“I’ll probably piss a lot of people off, but they need to hear it,” The Undertaker said. “It is what it is. To the young guys, ‘Oh, he’s a bitter old guy’. I’m not bitter. I did my time, I’m good. I walked away when I learned to walk away. I just think the product is a little soft. There’s guys here and there that have an edge to them, but there’s too much pretty, not enough substance right now.”