WWE SmackDown Live Commissioner Shane McMahon was recently a guest on WWE Hall Of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin’s podcast, The Steve Austin Show, to talk about his return to the company. You can check out highlights from their conversation here:
Nobody but Mark Calaway could’ve been able to portray ‘The Undertaker’ character:
“It’s iconic. No, I don’t [think anyone else could have pulled off The Undertaker gimmick]. It also gets into Mark’s temperament as a human being. That’s who he is. He is Cool Hand Luke. He is the king of the locker room. He is that. Everything is measured and reserved. That’s how he works. His punches are thrown for a reason, not just to throw punches in bunches, but thrown for specific reasons and things like that. Moves are not wasted, so that is who he is as an individual.”
Getting heat from The Undertaker’s mom:
“I got heat for that from his mom! Oh my God! I got heat from that. It happened. I did. I tatered the hell out of him. But that was the week before, the go-home WrestleMania in Brooklyn [New York] and something went awry. We were throwing hands and we were outside. I went to hit him with the monitor or something and it was stuck, so, all of a sudden, he sits up and I’m like, ‘well, he’s a big dude.’ I was like, ‘what am I going to do?’ So I panicked a little bit. I didn’t quite get my range, so I wasn’t completely looking at him and I went ‘whack!’ And I stuck it out there and I felt it. It went, ‘thunk!’ I went, ‘oh my God!’ I saw his eyes roll back into his head for a minute. He looked at me, and as soon as I saw that trickle of blood come down, I went, ‘I’m dead.’ So what do I do? I quickly get on him and whack, whack, whack. ‘I may as well get them in now and give him a couple of extra!'”
“Oh, he crushed me. He crushed me. In the beginning of that match with Taker, we’re doing stuff and we’re throwing hands. When we’re throwing, we already had the deal that we’re going to go. We’re starting to throw and we’re tagging. And then, one thing, he hit me and I just went into my own little world for a second, protect mechanism a little bit and then I leg-kick him. It went, ‘whack,’ and, and all of a sudden, he looked at me and he goes, ‘ouch’ and I saw it and he was hot. At some point he had grounded me and I was gassed, so I’m like, ‘let me catch my breath for a minute,’ so I’m laying in the fetal position totally relaxing because I know he’s about to go do something else. I got maybe 20 seconds to catch my breath. I’m taking big breaths in. My eyes are closed and my face’s flat on the canvas and he bear paw’s me, ‘whack!’, wide open jaw. All of a sudden, I’ve got those gold glitters when you get hit hard.”
Making his WrestleMania 32 entrance with his sons:
“I asked them maybe five minutes before they came out. I said, ‘do you guys want to come out with me?’ And they were like, ‘really?’ and I was like, ‘oh yeah.’ So when they came out, they just took to it like water out there. Like, I couldn’t believe it. Like, my two older boys, specifically. I was like, ‘look at these little guys!'”
Jumping off Hell In A Cell at WrestleMania and warning his wife:
“Well, I made the mistake once of doing something and not smartening her up and I was in the doghouse forever. So now I smarten her up on the potential of things like that happening. She knew, she knew. She was just like, ‘be careful.'”
Taking big bumps:
“Straight up, I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to nail this thing.’ That’s it. So I get up there. Here we go and jump off.” McMahon continued, “oh my God, stiff. I cracked two ribs on my right side. Yeah, at least two because it was sore for about [eight or nine weeks] ribs suck to heal.”
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcribed quotes