The Inspiring Story of How The Undertaker Started Wrestling

What was your Ogun experience? I was in college. I was a basketball player, right? And my coach tells me, Hey Mark, there's some European scouts that are interested in you. You know, maybe after, you know, next year, you know, they may want to give you a tryout. European pro basketball, right? But they all say they want to get you, you know, they'd like for you to be a little bigger because of the style they played back then. Okay, so I start lifting weights trying, you know, 6'8", 230, 240, which is, in the 80s, is huge for a basketball player, but still. So I start training. Was the European league, were they just more physical? Yeah, yeah. You know, it was like Rick Mahorn and Bill Lambier, you know, on the gas. They were just monsters. And so I start training and I'm trying to, you know, put on size and strength. And I met this guy in the gym who was like, every day I'd come in, he goes, hey, he goes, man, I'm going to go and I'm going to get into this wrestling. I want you to do wrestling with me. And I was a big wrestling fan as a kid. But as I got into, you know, basketball and football and everything else, I kind of, you know, I kind of drifted away. You know, I was just like, man, I think I'm going to go try to play some pro ball in Europe. And he goes, man, you should really try and do this with me, you know. So I kind of started getting in touch with the product again. You know, I kind of started watching again and, you know, no clue, you know, I'm kind of fall back into it again, right? I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. That's different. And I think one of the things that's helped me through my career is being a realist in what my talents are and what my talents aren't. And, you know, I was like, you know, I kind of started having these conversations with myself, like, even if you do make a team, you know, I mean, how long do you really have? Right. And being 21 and sitting on the end of the bench in Lithuania just really didn't wasn't that appealing of a, you know, I'm trying to weigh it up against what I'm seeing on TV, right? And I'm like, you know, I'm like, you got the Von Eriks and you got Hogan. I'm like, well, these guys are huge household names, you know. So I'm thinking maybe I ought to give it a try. So we find this guy by the name of Buzz Sawyer to train us, right? And I got to come up with two grand and I ain't got a pot or a window to throw it out of, right? So I get my brother, my oldest brother to cosign a loan, hawk everything I own and come up with two grand to pay Buzz Sawyer to train me to wrestle. Show up to his house first morning of training, right? Buzz was a, he was a good amateur, really good amateur. And show up at his house, knocking on the door, knocking on, there's about 10 of us standing out in the front yard, knocking on the door. Finally, fucking door swings open. What the fuck you want, right? He's standing there butt ass naked. Woke him up out of a, he's just standing there naked. And it was like, we're here to train? And he goes, oh, fuck, is that today? Yeah, yeah, and so he gets another guy that was staying there with him. His name was Perry Jackson, who I'm friends with to this day. He says, go out there and warm him up, right? So he goes out there and we run and do all just, I mean, everything they can do to blow us up and run us off, right? Totally gassed out, about two hours, just nothing but cardio shit, right? Finally, Buzz comes out. All right, everybody line up. All right, everybody get down, amateur position, right? So everybody gets down, fucking, he just stretches the shit out of everybody, right? Cross-faced, just fucking chicken wing and just hooking everybody and rolling them around in his front yard, right? It's just, that was it, right? Then he goes in the house. So y'all come back a couple other days. So this goes on for weeks. And every time I show up, there's one less guy that shows up, they just fucking, until I was the last one there. So I'm the last one there, I knock on the door, knock on the door. Fuck, he never answers, right? So I start peering in the windows, fucking, all the furniture's gone. Everything's gone, he's gone, he's gone to a different territory to work. He just left, right? Never learned any pro wrestling. He was just teaching you wrestling. He was just teaching me, yeah, obviously we signed up for, to get the teachers out of pro wrestling. But he just came out there and his whole goal, and this is the way it was back then, is they always tried to take your money. And then they tried to run you off. Most of those guys in that era were all shooters. They were all good amateurs. Right. And that was what they would do. They would take your money, then they'd hurt you, twist you, try and get you to quit. And they got your money and they didn't have to worry about it. There's some wrestling trainers that were famous for crazy physical training standards before they ever taught you anything. Carl Gotch, I'm sure you know who Carl Gotch is. Carl Gotch, who is not just a wrestler, but he's one of the legends of catch wrestling. Catch wrestling is like, it's a lot like submission wrestling that you see in the UFC or in Jiu Jitsu, but it's very wrestling oriented. Whereas Jiu Jitsu maybe would be, I don't want to say it's less technical, but it's more violent. It's a lot of snapping people down and cross facing and guillotines and ten finger guillotines. And there's still a lot of, like Sakurabu, it was one of the legends of MMA learned from another catch wrestler in Japan. And a lot of guys who, like Josh Barnett is another one, who's a big catch wrestling enthusiast. His style is all, and he submitted a lot of like really elite guys, but Carl Gotch was famous for making, you had to be able to do crazy shit. Like I think you had to do a thousand body weight squats. You had to be able to do, like you had to do all these things before you even teach you anything. Like you had to be fucking tip top Magoo before you would ever get into those ropes. Yeah, absolutely. And that was the whole goal is to run you off weed out the week. Weed out the week. Yeah, and then if you went through all of that and you were still there, okay, well, this kid, let's see if we can teach him how to do this. But there was that big weed out process and that was, I think Buzz's whole deal, his whole deal was a scam from the start. I mean, he wanted the money and he knew, back then we had territories before Vince kind of took it nationwide. Texas had a territory. California had a couple of territories, Oregon, and guys just went for- 2,000 bucks in 86, that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money for a kid in college on a scholarship. I didn't have shit. I sold everything I owned. So you're fucked. How do you go from there? So I lived in my car for a little bit. I bounced in bars, collected a little money here and there. I just did whatever I could just to keep eating and keep training and did what I could. And I knew, so the Von Erics ran Dallas. That was their world class championship wrestling. And I knew that they were in the office on Wednesday. Like they would come in there and book the cards and the guys would come in, get their paychecks and shit on Wednesday. So every Wednesday for about eight months, I would go down there and I'd sit in the lobby and fucking guys would come right, walk right by me, not even acknowledge my presence. Every Wednesday. Every Wednesday for eight months I went and just sat there. And eight months- Did you ask to speak to anybody? Yeah, so there was a referee back there. His name was Bronco Lubitsch. He was the only one that would speak to me, right? And they would be kind of like, yeah, you're here again, huh, kid? I was like, yes, sir, Mr. Lubitsch. I was hoping maybe I'd get a chance to talk to somebody today. All right, well, just good luck, and I would sit there. And I'd walk by and try like, as somebody would come through, I'd kind of start to stand, fuck, they ever stop. Just blew right by me. One day, I was right at the end of my row, I was like, fuck, I'm not getting anywhere here. And Fritz Von Erich, the patriarch of the past, the patriarch of the family, right? The guy that owned the company came in. And he walked in and he stopped and he looked at me. Like, and I started to, once again, I started to get up and introduce myself. And he turned around and he went into Bronco's office and he had a deep gravelly voice and I could hear him. And he's like, who's that kid out there? And he said, ah, he's been coming here for months. He's just trying to get booked. And 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 had 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. So had you ever practiced? No, I was practicing. I mean, yeah, but I'd never had a real match. I mean, I'm just, you know, every little outlaw, independent kind of deal that I could get, I was doing. But I hadn't worked with top guys or, you know. When you say like outlaw, independent, like, so you were doing some matches? I was doing some matches, but not professional. Like, not televised, not for a real company. Right, obviously. It's just like some jackass, like, okay, I'm a wrestling promoter. I'm gonna go to the Knights of Columbus Hall and see if I can put 20 people in here. You know, that's the kind of shit you would do. And then you have to go for no money. And then, you know, you'd set up the ring, whatever you had to do. But the wrestling, the time in the ring was what was so valuable at that point, is getting those reps and getting that stuff. So, and then, so they booked me. And I don't know, you've heard of Bruiser Brody? Yes. Yes. Tough guy. Anybody's standards back then, especially, is my first match, right? So, now I'm a pretty respectful guy. And I'm sure in any industry, you know, even when you, you know, a new comic, you pay respect to the older guy. I mean, it's just the way it should be. And the way it really was back then, especially, you know, in our business, you know, you just, you didn't say much. You spoke when spoken to kind of deal. And so I, I'm Bruiser Brody, Bruiser Brody's my first professional match, right? So, I don't know, I'm 20, 21 maybe. And I'm, you know, I'm in the ring and I'm looking at him. I'm like, fuck, I'm bigger than he is. This is shit that's going on in my head, right? I'm so nervous. Like you couldn't have drove a nail up my ass with a sledgehammer. I'm so nervous to start with. But I'm looking at like that, that, that stupid voice in the back of my head's like, you're fucking bigger than he is. You know, cause Bruiser Brody was bigger than life, man. He had all that hair and he was just fucking, he was just a man, he was an animal, right? So, fucking with bell rings and I pull my tie up with him, collar and elbow. And you know, I jam him up into a corner and he's, hey kid, lighten up a little bit kid, you know, relax. And I'm just like, I mean, my body's like angle iron, right? I'm so just, whoa. Anyway, so I go to shove him and my hands, you know, we're kind of hand fighting a little bit and my hand slips off and I kind of, you know, I kind of palm him in the face. Temperature in the room changed a little bit at that moment. So we tie up again and I'm about to shoot him across the ring and I shoot him across the ring and I'm yelling like I'm going to hit him with a clothesline. So as I tie up a clothesline, right? He comes off the ropes like fucking like a bullet, like a six foot five, 300 pound bullet. And he kicks me square in my fucking jaw. My eyes roll back in my head. And next thing I know he's grabbing me. He's like, let's go for a walk, right? So he throws me out of the ring and throws me down on this table. And this place called the Sportatorium in Dallas, they've torn it down now, but they had the folding chairs that had, they were metal, but then they had the wood slats. Fuck. He takes this chair as hard as he can, you know, and not the, we're not talking about the metal folding chairs, which hurt enough in their own right when you get hit enough times with them. He swings as hard as he can. This chair just fucking explodes. Wood slats fly all over the place. I'm thinking I've, I've never been hit so hard, man. I've been hit, you know, but I'd never been hit that hard by anything at that point. Throws me back in the ring, ties me all up in the ropes, right? I'm greener and shit. Don't know what the hell I'm doing. And he just starts hitting the other ropes and coming and just kicking me as hard as he can in the head. Oh my God. And I deserved it. You know, I mean, he was giving me a lesson that I needed to learn. Anyway, a couple of minutes later, boom, he pins me. And you know, that was it. We go back, you know, we go back to the dressing room and I'm like, holy shit. I just got the shit kicked out of me. And I went over to him. I was like, Mr. Brody, thank you. You know, he said, all right, kid, just, you know, relax next time, will you? And I was like, yes, sir. I just appreciate, you know, being in the ring with you. And, you know, went back off from my corner and got to gather where I was. And, you know, and I could, over him telling the promoter, he's like, fuck, you ought to book this kid some more. They were trying to find someplace else to send me. He said, that kid's going to be something. And, but you know, at the time, I was too green. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. So I had to go somewhere else. But that was my first introduction into wrestling. And I got thumped pretty good. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free, only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs, all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.