Vince McMahon has made many mistakes over the years in WWE, but in July 1990 he nearly made the biggest mistake of all.
McMahon has gone on record multiple times in the past to state that The Undertaker is his favorite WWE Superstar of all time, and with good reason. However, just 4 months before The Undertaker’s debut at Survivor Series ’90, all that Vince McMahon saw in Mark Calaway was a tall basketball player with no unique qualities.
On the latest episode of his Something to Wrestle podcast, WWE Executive Director Bruce Prichard delved i to the relationship between McMahon and Calaway, touching upon how Vince refused to meet with Calaway in July 1990 just one day after he wrestled Lex Luger at WCW Great American Bash.
“‘Taker had a dislocated hip, but he worked the match anyway because the next day he was supposed to meet with Vince. That didn’t happen and it didn’t happen because Vince looked at The Undertaker and thought, ‘ah, he’s just another tall basketball player with red hair, I don’t see anything special in him.’,”
Prichard would continue to pursue Mark Calaway, noting that his Great American Bash opponent didn’t help his situation.
“First of all, he’s working with Luger. So, come on, that’s like working with a broomstick that doesn’t have any bristles and is nailed to the floor,” said a candid Prichard. “That meeting was canceled and I begged Vince to please meet with Mark Calaway because they were in a show in the [New Jersey-based] Meadowlands, I believe, and I offered to get The Undertaker there. I said, ‘look, I’ll get this guy there, just meet him.’ I didn’t know him. I mean, I didn’t know him from Adam. But I’d spoken to Mark and I was a big fan of Mark’s work, plus in my head, I had an idea as to what to do with him. So I had an idea, and that was the talent, in my head, that could pull off that idea.”
Undertaker would go on to debut alongside Bruce Prichard (Brother Love) at the 1990 WWE Survivor Series event and even though Prichard would not last long at the side of The Undertaker, the 30-year career that would follow that character’s debut is more than enough proof that Mark Calaway could, in fact, “pull off that idea.”
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