Kane Looks Back At Origin Of His Character, How He Found Out About It

Kane recently recounted the origin of his character in WWE as well as how he found out about the opportunity. Glenn Jacobs is now the mayor of Knoxville County, Tennessee but he made his name as Kane in WWE, playing the brother of The Undertaker in a role that lasted over 25 years. He recently did a Q&A at River City Wrestling Con via Going Ringside.

During the conversation he spoke about the start of the character and how it came about after Vader got arrested in Kuwait during his feud with Undertaker. He added that he was working for USWA with Jerry Lawler when he was asked about playing the role. You can see the highlights below:

On How Kane First Came About:

“So what had happened was, Undertaker was in a rivalry with Big Van Vader, and they were in Kuwait and this was — some of you guys remember this, the talk show host in Kuwait, which is a Middle Eastern country. Probably not the most progressive criminal justice system. The talk show host said something to Vader, Leon, like the old, ‘Is wrestling fake?’ So Leon kind of roughed him up a little. Not terrible, but kind of grabbed him and he was, ‘Is this fake?,’ blah blah blah, which led to his arrest in Kuwait. A Middle Eastern country is probably not have the most progressive criminal justice system, right?

“So they needed an opponent for Undertaker. And that was where the original idea for Kane came from… we didn’t know it was going to happen to [Vader]. He was there for like a week. But again it’s like, ‘Dude, this is a Middle Eastern country and you’re in jail.’ So anyway, Leon’s literally out of the picture and we don’t know for how long, like if they’re going to have to send in the airborne troops to get him out or what’s going to happen there. And they needed an opponent for Undertaker. So they come up with this idea of Kane, who was the Undertaker’s long-lost brother, putting me under a mask. B ecause obviously I’d had those two characters that we should not talk about [Fake Diesel and Isaac Yankem] and they just needed to put me under a mask so people didn’t realize who I was. And then the backstory was you have this dude that was the Undertaker’s brother that got burned in the fire, and all that stuff.”

On McMahon Deciding to Make It More Than a One-Off:

“And what ended up happening though is, Vince liked the idea so much. He’s like, ‘Why are we wasting this on one match? This is much more of a storyline than that.’ And that’s kind of where the whole thing took, — for me especially — took a very good turn. And they decided to really invest in the Kane character. And in the end, it became a standalone character.”

On When He Found Out About It:

“When when this was going on, I was actually working for Jerry Lawler in USWA. And I got a call that they want to put me under a mask, it’s this this new deal to to wrestle the Undertaker. Obviously that was huge news for me. So but that was back in the day before pagers — yeah, I think before pagers, but before cell phones anyway. So I remember like someone told me, ‘Hey, you need to call the office.’ So, I’m literally stopping at a gas station, calling from a pay phone somewhere between Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, and got told, ‘Hey, we have a
really good opportunity for you.’ And turned out to be the break of a lifetime, obviously.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Going Ringside with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.