The Undertaker didn’t just play a character on television. For decades, Mark Callaway basically lived it.
During Booker T’s Hall of Fame podcast, Undertaker opened up about why he protected The Deadman persona for so long. Booker T noted that he never really saw Undertaker outside of being Undertaker, and Callaway admitted that was by design.
“I never saw the Undertaker outside of being the Undertaker. To a fault, man. I knew I had been given a gift with that character. And I knew that I wanted to make it different.”
Undertaker said the character was so over the top that he had to make people believe there was something truly different about him. He wasn’t sure exactly how fans were supposed to process him, but he knew they needed to see him as something far from normal.
“Back then, obviously, we didn’t have to worry about cell phones and all of that stuff, but it was still like the character was so over the top. But I wanted it to be as realistic as possible.”
“I didn’t know if I wanted them to feel like I was a corpse or I was dead. I wanted people to understand that I was different.”
That commitment didn’t stop when the cameras turned off. Undertaker said even his real-life clothes were built around keeping the image alive. He said people would see him in airports and instantly feel that something was different about him, even if they had no idea who he was.
“So I just made that commitment early on, like you’re going to live this thing. So all my clothes, like my street clothes, although they were different than my ring clothes, I always wore black jeans, I wore black boots, I wore black T-shirts.”
“People would see me in the airports because that’s obviously, you know, we travel every day. And people would see me and you could just see it on their face like, ‘No, this dude is really… this dude’s something wrong with him.’ And if they weren’t a wrestling fan, it was still like, ‘Who is this guy?’”
After retirement, dropping that protection wasn’t easy. Undertaker said playing The Deadman in front of huge crowds felt natural, but speaking as Mark Callaway was a totally different beast.
“As Undertaker I could go out in front of 100,000 people and not bat an eye. But as Mark Callaway, I’d have a hard time delivering a speech to 10 people. I always had the protection of the character.”
That commitment is why The Undertaker worked for so long. He didn’t just protect kayfabe for television. He protected the mystique everywhere, and fans bought into it because he never gave them a reason not to.
What do you think about Undertaker protecting his character for all those years? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section below.
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