The Undertaker on Finally Retiring

Yeah, so Vince had the original likeness and then, you know, after a couple years, I mean, it had kind of taken over. Like, I lived that. Like, everywhere I went, you know, I was always dressed in black. You know, what people saw on TV, they pretty much saw in real life. So if you went out to dinner... I would dress quite that, quite like that. But I would be an all-black. I didn't say much to people. Because you had a state in character? I always stayed in character. I always felt like I had... I always felt like that I needed to be what they saw on TV, because if they saw me differently, like, if they saw this, and then they see that on TV, it's like, oh, fuck, it's just acting. It's just this, it's that. So I tried to make that guy real. And I did for a long time. Like, I didn't do for years. I didn't do interviews. I didn't do personal appearances. You got very little of me, other than what you saw on TV. And that's what kept people captivated. Like, I mean, everybody's like, fuck, I know he's not dead. But he's fucked up. He's something's wrong. There's something. And it captivated, you know, to stay, and I'm not patting myself on the back, but to stay relevant for 30 years in this industry, where there's so much exposure. I mean, you have to, I felt like that's the extreme that I had to go to, you know, to make that guy continue to mean something. Does it feel almost weird for you to be doing like a podcast? Crazy. Absolutely crazy. So it started, you know, I did a docuseries, kind of chronicling the last few years of my career. It was actually me trying to come to grips with calling it a day, really. It's called, come on, Scootin, this way, into the microphone. So we ended up calling it, it had nothing to do with the Jordan deal, but it was called The Last Ride, which is one of my finishing moves. So it kind of chronicled like the last few years of my career and me kind of chasing the dragon for that, that one match that I could hang my hat on and say, that's it, that's it, you know, and as you get older and the injuries and all that, I don't, I mean, I figure that in, but I still see in my head what I used to could do, and that's what I was striving. I mean, you've seen it in the fight game all the time. Guys are looking for that, you know, they can't come to grips with the fact that their skills have diminished and there's a changing of the guard. Yeah. And it's kind of the same with what I was doing. I was looking for that one match that I could say, motherfuckers, I still got it. And now I'm out. Was there a conversation about this with Vince where you were trying to figure out when to close the door? Yeah, there was lots. There were lots of those conversations. And there were people that I talked to along the way, you know, through my career. I was like, look, if I get to a point where my skills have diminished and I can't recognize it, I want you to tell me, or at least bring the conversation up, you know? And it got to the point where nobody wants to have that conversation, you know? Nobody wants to have that, like, hey, dude, your day. Yeah, it's up. It's a real problem. I put a big burden on people and, you know, they just couldn't do it. And now Vince, who I have an unbelievable relationship with, but also that's a huge intellectual property for Vince for 30 years, you know? So he didn't, you know, I could go out for another few years and, you know, I could knock somebody on their ass or I could chokeslam somebody, but I can't do it personally. Right. I can't because I know there's so many guys that are coming up that are trying to get that spot. And, you know, I can't go out there and, okay, I got all this equity built up from all these years. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna live off of that. I remember when I was a kid in Boston, they had, it was a local wrestling promotion, but Killer Kowalski, Killer Kowalski was on, and I don't know how old he was at the time, but he had to be way, way up in the years. I mean, it looked like he was in his fifties. Yeah. And, you know, I remember thinking like, even as a kid, like how long can a guy do this? Yeah. And it varies. Who's the longest? Are you the longest reigning guy? No, I think there's, I think there's guys, I think there's guys that are like flair lasted. At his level. Yeah. He's the longest by like a lot. He's, he's probably going to be humble about this right now, but even then the Kowalski's and all that, the styles were different, right? It was more like arm drags and like little tosses. We had the claw. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And he's, I mean, he's throwing people off of 16 foot cells and getting thrown off of Titan Trons, like ramps and all this crazy physical stuff. It's a whole different game. And he went 10, 15 years, probably longer than most of his peers. Well, the fact that I stayed 30 years with one company, I think that's the one really big thing is once I started with, with Vince, I stayed with Vince, where a lot of guys, you know, they would, they would jump from one promotion to the other. And I stayed once I got there. I was there and, you know, it was, it's been a hell of a ride. 30 years is a crazy ride. So what was your last match? My last match was in April, the bone yard was April, April 2020. Yeah, right here. It is. It's a nice bike. Yeah, that was, that's a West Coast chopper right there. That's the bike actually belonged to Garth Brooks, security guy. But this, this was, this was, we got lucky because COVID had already shut everything down. So everybody else, this is WrestleMania. So everybody else is doing their matches in an empty warehouse. And we got to go off and do this kind of themed match. They turned this whole area into like a cemetery and got to do a lot of theatrical stuff. So that must have felt like I can hang my hat on this one. Yeah. You know, we started filming that at about eight o'clock at night and we wrapped at about five in the morning. And like at the end of it, I was like, fuck, I can hardly stand up. You know, everything was just locked up. And I was, you know, because I went into it and, you know, I started training for mania and obviously I thought I was going to be in a stadium in a ring. And so I had really got a good head start on my training and, you know, my weight was coming down, everything was, was good. And then fucking COVID hit. And then it was just like the gyms shut down. And then, you know, then I got to, I had to get to Florida just to make sure, you know, that I was in Florida. Right. Yeah. Because you ever knew like when they were going to shut all the airlines down. So the training, you know, my training kind of went to shit. And, uh, but I was really happy with how this turned out. And I knew at the end of it physically, your day's done, man. And I, you know, as much as I want to do it here and I want to do it here, this is the body just, it can't deliver. So what do you do now? I mean, that's a long career. I mean, yeah, it is. And I'm trying to figure that part out, uh, because I've dedicated my whole life to this, to this business. And, you know, there'll be times, you know, I help out and maybe mentor some guys, but, you know, I haven't, I gotta find out what I'm passionate about. 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. 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