The Undertaker Says Limited Schedule Played Role in WrestleMania 30 Concussion
The Undertaker doesn’t think some unusually nasty bump from Brock Lesnar caused the concussion that wiped out his memory of WrestleMania 30. More than a decade later, he believes his age and barely-there wrestling schedule finally caught up with him.
Undertaker suffered the concussion during the 2014 match where Lesnar famously ended The Streak, and he was taken to the hospital before WrestleMania was even over. Speaking on Six Feet Under with Paul Heyman, Undertaker said the actual bump doesn’t look particularly scary when he watches it back. He had taken much worse punishment throughout his career and kept going.
“I think that’s somewhere where it happened. But when I watch it, it’s like, I’ve taken far worse bumps and popped up. I think what happened is, it’s getting late in my career, and at that point I’m only working a couple of times a year, and it’s Father Time catching up with me. When your body’s not used to that trauma, you just don’t take it as well.”
Heyman agreed, pointing out that decades of smaller shots can eventually matter just as much as one massive impact.
“It’s also the number of dings that you’ve taken over the years. There comes a time that when you’ve taken so many hits, it’s not that nuclear hit that wipes you out.”
Heyman compared it to something Ronda Rousey once told him about her UFC 193 loss to Holly Holm. He said Rousey explained that a childhood accident had once knocked her unconscious and left her vulnerable to being clipped in a particular spot. According to Heyman, Rousey believed Holm caught her there early in the fight and she continued operating almost entirely on instinct.
“Out of nowhere, she just turned to me and said, ‘I have to tell you what really happened between Holly Holm and me.’ And I had never brought that subject up. She started talking about how, when she was a kid, an accident happened, and it knocked her out cold. And because of that, she was always vulnerable to getting clipped just on the right side. And she took the clip in the first round. She was out, but on her feet, because that was her training. Just fight it through, fight it through. Ignore it. Let’s just go. And everything was on muscle memory.”
That sounds pretty familiar to Undertaker. He has said he somehow finished the WrestleMania 30 match on instinct despite having no memory of doing it. His last clear memory from that day is around 2 PM, and his memory didn’t begin coming back until roughly four or five the next morning. At the hospital, he was repeatedly asked his name and age, and the only people he recognized were his wife and Vince McMahon.
The concussion also rattled Undertaker heading into WrestleMania 31. Bray Wyatt was his first match back, and Undertaker has said Triple H found him crouched near Gorilla before his entrance and reminded him not to forget who he was. Undertaker later thanked Triple H for that moment during his Hall of Fame speech. Doctors had cleared him to wrestle without reservation, although they warned that another concussion would require a much different conversation.
Undertaker was 49 when Lesnar ended The Streak and continued wrestling until 2020. Looking back now, he doesn’t blame one freak bump for what happened that night. He believes decades of punishment, Father Time and wrestling only a couple of times a year left his body far less prepared to absorb the kind of impact that once barely slowed him down.
Do you think Undertaker’s limited schedule was the biggest factor in his WrestleMania 30 concussion, or was it simply years of punishment finally catching up with him? Leave your feedback and let us know what you think.
