The Undertaker Recalls Process of Building Trust With Vince McMahon

On the latest episode of Six Feet Under, The Undertaker talked about building trust with Vince McMahon, his American Badass gimmick and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On having equality to nix creative ideas: “You used to have to earn Vince’s trust to be able to either put the kibosh on something like, ‘Nah, I’m not going to do that.’ ‘I think yeah, that’s what we need. That’s what we’re going to do.’ So you have to earn that that. [If he said that’s what you’re going to do], that’s what you’re going to do. Either you do that or you you say no, and then whatever the consequences of that is, right? So yeah, with Vince, once he trusts you and understands that you understand the vision then he was much more receptive to your input.”

On having creative input in the American Badass gimmick: “The whole American Badass thing was mine. And there were two reasons why I did it. One, I was starting to feel a little stale. And two, as great as the gimmick and the character was, I was confined to what I could do to be true to the character. Which was always the most important thing to me, to be true to that character and and represent the way people saw it. The Attitude Era comes along and you have Stone Cold cutting these crazy promos. The Rock cutting all the — everybody’s cutting all these cutting edge promos, and it just didn’t work. It didn’t work for that original Undertaker version. So I needed to shift a little bit. I kept some elements, but then you get a little bit more of Mark Callaway with the American Badass. A hyped up version because I’ve always rode bikes, and I’ve always kind of been in that culture. So now I don’t have any — I’m free. I can cut the same promos. I can tell Rock that I’m gonna — I think one of my favorite ones I said, I was gonna stick my boots so far down his throat he’d be able to kick his own ass or something. But I couldn’t do that as the Undertaker, right? Only as the American Badass can I say things like that. So it helped me stay relevant.”

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