The Undertaker Says Initial Excitement In WWE Centered On Gimmick He Wasn't Doing

WWE Survivor Series 1990 was saw the debut of two new Superstars: The Undertaker and the Gobbledy Gooker. One would go on to become a WWE Hall of Famer, and the other was lambasted. Mark Calaway, aka The Undertaker, would fortunately be associated with the cooler of the two surprises that night, but he admitted on "Impaulsive" that he had his concerns.

"Initially, I was just excited that I wasn't going to be the egg man," 'Taker said of the "hatching" of Gobbledy Gooker. "That was a legitimate source of anxiety for me for a while. I'd been in WCW and I was trying to grow my hair out, and I'm like, [Vince McMahon] is gonna shave my head... I got a big-ass head anyway, I look like an egg... I was losing sleep about it."

Calaway, who had initially signed with the company with no clear creative direction, said he was kept in the dark about his role, until an ambiguous phone call from Vince McMahon put his mind at ease.

"The old man called me one day, and it was — he didn't call me Mark, he just said, 'Is this The Undertaker?' And I'm having this moment, covering the phone up, I'm like, 'Undertaker? Undertaker? Undertaker's not egg man'... 'Yeah! Yeah, this is The Undertaker!'"

'Taker said McMahon then summoned him up to Connecticut to lay out his vision. "I was like, huh, this could be really cool. And then they started making the original costume and everything, and I was like, 'Yeah.' Because I loved the old Clint Eastwood westerns... there's all these different elements that I did have a lot of interest in." 

Please credit "Impaulsive" when using quotes from this article, and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.