Bruce Prichard Recalls His Reason For Wanting The Undertaker To Be Named Kane

On a recent episode of Six Feet Under, Bruce Prichard talked about the original name of The Undertaker, which was supposed to be Kane The Undertaker.  The Dead Man debuted at Survivor Series 1991, but for three weeks before that he had the name of Kane The Undertaker. Prichard noted that the name was (of course) based on the biblical figure of Cain, Adam’s son who killed his brother Abel. You can check out some highlights below:

On The Undertaker Name:

“They sent over the drawings of different looks for you to be this dark character. And the coolest one was what we ended up with. And he (Pat Patterson) goes, ‘He looks like an old fashioned Undertaker. You know, like the guys in the in the Old West, and they build the coffin, and they had a base, and they bury the guy, The Undertaker.’ And like, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ But I wanted to call you Kane, because Cain was the first man to commit murder. Cain killed his brother.”

On Cain:

“In many ways Cain was the most evil person in biblical lore. Kills his own brother man, first man to ever commit murder. And I just loved that name, cool strong name, Cain. I loved it so much, I named your brother and my son.”

On the Original Name:

“And so it was going to be Kane The Undertaker. That was the deal, man. And the first man, you couldn’t get more evil than Kane. We were gonna go with that, we went three weeks with Kane until we dropped it… You were introduced as Kane The Undertaker. We did three weeks and then we did TV. That’s why I remember its three weeks, because we did that whole TV’s as Kane The Undertaker. The next TV, which was three weeks later, we dropped the Kane, and you were just The Undertaker. And I said, ‘That’ll never get over. Way too gimmicky.'”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Six Feet Under an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.