The Undertaker has looked back on his appearance at the WWE Raw on Netflix premiere and how he was just moments from disaster multiple times that night.
One of many legends to make an appearance on the January 6th Raw at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles California, The Undertaker made a surprise appearance to endorse Rhea Ripley after The Eradicator defeated Liv Morgan to become the new Women’s World Champion.
Making another entrance as The American Badass, the Hall of Famer made his entrance on a Harley Davidson and rode around the ring before posing with Ripley to close out the segment.
While the segment was well-received by fans and went off without any issues, The Phenom admitted that earlier in the day things were not as straightforward.
Discussing the preparation for the segment on his Six Feet Under podcast, Undertaker first stated that he was anxious about the production team selecting the right motorcycle for the segment:
“A week out. It started out with, ‘Hey, you come into LA?’ Then it’s like, ‘Well we’re thinking, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?’ When the bike idea came up, I started getting pictures of motorcycles. ‘What do you think about this bike? What do you think about this bike, right?’ And it was just like, I got four or five different people sending me pictures of motorcycles. And I’m like ‘Okay, I’ve already seen this bike. I’ve already said no to this.’
So I’m already starting to get a little bit of anxiety about, ‘Okay, are they gonna get the right bike?’ Because the bike matters when you’re riding inside of an arena and you’re working in tight spaces, which is incredible, and I’ll get to this in a second about this new arena…But anyway, I got there. So I’m getting all these pictures and I think I finally got it narrowed down, and somebody else, random, that hadn’t been in the text thread, seems to be a different bike. And I’m like, ‘No, this bike isn’t gonna work. The forks are too extended. It’s too long.’”
Continuing, Taker added that during one run-through he nearly ran over a cameraman who got in the way of the bike:
“So finally I get there, I see the bike, and like, ‘Okay, this is, this is doable.’ I said, ‘Now let me go out, look at the arena,’ and check it out, right? And it’s like, ‘Okay, here’s the bike. You’re going to go straight out here, and then you’re going to make a left turn and go up the aisle.’ The aisle is this wide, right? I’m that wide. I’ve got to come up the tron, and then I’ve got to make a left, up this, up the aisle way, and it’s a big old Road King Bagger. It’s a big, wide bike. And so, here I come.
I’m coming up the ramp, and so I go to make the first right turn. The first time I make the right turn. I go in front of the hard camera and I’m about to turn in front of the announcer position and the two cameramen. They’re right by the ring, and they decide at the last second they want to get out of my way. So they just dart in front of me and I’m like, ‘Ah.’ I have to brake immediately so I don’t run over a cameraman. I’m like, ‘Geez, guys, come on.’
These are the same camera guys, which are professionals. They’re the best in the world, the WWE production and camera. They are the absolute best at what they do. So I go around, and then I go back up the aisle and they’re asking, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I’d like to do another run, just without the potential for running anybody over.’ They said, ‘Yeah, sure, we got plenty of time.’”
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Wanting another run-through to make sure the ride around would work, Undertaker stated that he once again had issues with the production team, this time nearly getting taken out by a production cable:
“So I back up, I got a lot of room to work in this little area. So I back the bike around, back it up to the starting spot here. I do it again, make the turn. So this time as I go, I’ve come up the aisle and I’m about to make my right turn. So there’s another camera guy on the apron, and then he’s got this, I don’t know what they’re called, the cable puller. Yeah, he is on the outside of the barricade. Well, all of a sudden, I don’t know what he thinks, so I’m making the turn, and he jerks the cable up right in front of the bike.
I don’t know if he was gonna go over my head or he didn’t want me to run over it, but he damn near clotheslines me. Now I’m pissed, I’m cussing at everybody like geez! I know how important this is, this is going to be. Just the whole thing of I don’t want to be the guy that wrecks his motorcycle on the premiere of Netflix,” People are gonna [say], ‘See, The Undertaker can’t ride his motorcycle anymore.’ I’m already thinking about all this. It came out great, yeah, when we did it.”
Addressing the live segment that fans saw on the broadcast, Undertaker admitted that he also didn’t factor in the possibility that a fan might accidentally grab the bike and cause him to lose control, which thankfully did not happen:
“But another thing that I didn’t factor in were people being in there, arms extended. I’m up here, so it had some ape hangers on it, and I’ve been in that situation before. Sometimes people get a little overzealous, they want to touch you and they want to grab you. Well, it doesn’t take much of a little bit of a throttle push and a grab the other hand, and then the hand comes off the clutch and yeah, it’s just a recipe for disaster. You got five feet till you’re hitting kids, right? But everybody was really cool. They didn’t grab me or anything. And the ride around the ring was good.”
[Quotes have been edited for clarity.]
Also on his podcast, The Undertaker spoke about John Cena’s retirement tour.
H/t to Wrestling News.co