Shane McMahon was recently a guest on the Steve Austin Show podcast hosted by ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. Shane spoke on a wide variety of topics. We have already covered Shane telling the story about getting some heat with the Undertaker’s mom.
Shane also spoke about the origins of the Undertaker gimmick. The Undertaker is one of, if not the greatest gimmick in the history of the wrestling business.
Shane says that Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson came up with the idea after interviewing Percy Pringle (aka Paul Bearer). Percy said that he had previously worked as a mortician in the past. This had light bulbs going off in Vince’s head, leading to the creation of the Undertaker:
“It actually came through interviewing Percy because Vince [McMahon] and Pat [Patterson] specifically were talking like, ‘well, give us something. We’re thinking about different characters. Like what have you done in the past?’ And Percy said he had done a couple of other things and he had done this and he mentioned he was a mortician and all of a sudden my dad just locked in on that. He said, ‘you were a mortician? That’s it! He’s The Undertaker. You are Paul Bearer.’ And it was born. That was it.”
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The Undertaker would go on to become Vince McMahon’s greatest creation. Shane would also say that he doesn’t think anybody else other than Mark Calaway would have been able to pull of the gimmick.
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You can listen to the full podcast here.
