During a recent interview with ESPN, The Undertaker commented on Hulk Hogan faking a neck injury at WWE Survivor Series 1991, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On Hogan telling people backstage at Survivor Series 1991 that Undertaker hurt him: “That was crazy. It started out bad, and it progressively got worse. Hogan claims that I hurt him on the tombstone during the PPV. So I’m thinking to myself, like I didn’t find out until Tuesday. I knew there was going to be another PPV, but I didn’t know I was going to drop the belt back, or what was going on. That came up out of nowhere. But I kind of figured, oh, ok, maybe it’s because he’s telling everybody I hurt him, and ya know, Hulk was still the golden goose at the time. So I’m thinking, OK, they’re gonna take this off of me because they can’t trust me or whatnot. It really wasn’t explained to me what the reasoning was behind it.”
On how Hogan set him up from the start, warning him before the show about his injured neck: “I was devastated. The whole deal was, it was a setup from the get go. So back then, on a TV or PPV day, we’d show up at the arena around noon, one o’clock. Hogan would roll in about four or five. So I remember getting there about noon and Hogan was already there. And I’m walking down the hall, so he goes, ‘Hey kid, can I talk to you?’ So we go into one of the locker rooms into the shower. That was where all the business was done back in the day, you went into the shower, whether it was to fight, settle whatever score, it always happened in the shower. So he’s telling me, he goes, ‘Hey, I got this neck injury,’ he says, ‘I’m really nervous about taking your finish.’ I was like, ‘Hulk, believe me,’ I said, ‘I will protect you, I pride myself on not hurting people and I promise you, I will have you so tight that there is no way possible that you’re going to hurt your neck.’ So with that, we went about our business. Every point during the day, I’d pass him in the hall or whatnot, I’d get the, ya know, remember about my neck. So that was all I got all day, was my neck.”
On how Hogan acted really dramatic about the injury backstage after the match and asked to get his wife and kids on the phone: “So we go into the finish, Flair comes down, slides the chair down, I pick him up, and when I tell you I had the brother secure, he was secure. Boom, I give him the tombstone, as soon as my knees hit, I hear, ‘Ohhh, you got me, brother.’ I’m like, how? I’m, what, I was 24, 25 years old, and I just crushed Hulk Hogan, right? That’s what’s going through my head. Like they gave me this opportunity, they gave me this chance to run with the ball, and I hurt the golden goose. So I’m devastated, mortified, right? So they get Hogan out of the ring, and I get the belt, and Paul Bearer and I are doing our stuff. I go backstage, and I’m asking, where’s Hulk at? ‘Oh, he’s laying on Vince’s office’s floor.’ So I go in there and he’s laying out on the floor, ‘Ohhhh,’ carrying on. I’m going in to check on him, but here come the paramedics, so I go behind a wall with Shane. Me and Shane are behind the wall, and I’m having to listen to, ‘Can you feel this, can you do that?’ Then I hear, ‘Somebody get my wife and kids on the phone.’”
On how Shane told him backstage that Hogan’s head never came close to hitting the mat: “I don’t know what the hell is going on other than the fact that I just hurt the golden goose. Shane’s right there telling me, he’s like, ‘Mark, his head wasn’t anywhere close to touching that mat.’ And I’m like, ‘No man, I hurt him.’ I couldn’t put a thought together, I just thought I killed him. And we didn’t have access back then to watch things back right away like we do now. So I didn’t see it until Tuesday in Texas. The next day I was in Hamilton, Ontario defending the title against Davey Boy Smith or somebody. I was gone. There was no Monday Night RAW yet. We had house shows.”
On how wrestlers started telling him that Hogan’s head never hit the mat: “By now, a lot of the boys have come up to me and they’re like, shaking their heads, like, his head never got anywhere close to the mat. And you watch it back, you can tell, his head never touched. So now I’m in this precarious situation. I’m still a greenhorn. And now I’ve got to confront the face of wrestling, the biggest draw ever, and now I gotta figure out what I’m going to do here. As a man, I gotta know what the hell, but I also know that it’s risking my professional career, and at that point, everybody is so paranoid too about their position and their spots.”
On confronting Hogan backstage at This Tuesday in Texas and what Hogan said: “Finally I got to San Antonio and I was like, ‘Terry, I watched it back, your head never hit.’ He’s like, ‘Well, brother, what it was was you had me so tight, that when we came down, I had nowhere to move, and that’s what jammed my neck because I couldn’t move at all.’ It was too tight. At that point, I was like, OK. Then I knew. I was like, OK, I kinda realized, I know what you’re all about, and that’s all I needed.”
On how he treated Hogan backstage after that incident: “I treated him with the respect that I think, for what he did for the business, he deserved. So I treated him that way. I was not overly friendly but I didn’t, if he was in the building, I always made sure to say hello, engage him in conversation, but I always, from that Tuesday in Texas when I got that answer, I knew all I needed to know about him. Then my radar was always up anytime I had to interact with him, but I dealt in a professional manner with him.”
