The Undertaker figured out he needed a life after wrestling on the night he stopped wrestling.
Asked on Insight with Chris Van Vliet when he began preparing for the end, he gave a date rather than a period.
Unfortunately, way too late. I think it was November 22 2020, when it dawned on me that you might need to find something else to do here.
That is the night he closed Survivor Series with his Final Farewell, standing in an empty arena in Orlando while the ThunderDome screens ran behind him. WWE built the show around the anniversary. He had debuted at Survivor Series exactly 30 years earlier, on November 22, 1990.
His last match had already happened. He beat AJ Styles in the Boneyard Match at WrestleMania 36 in April 2020, in a cinematic setting WWE turned to during the pandemic.
He has since filled the gap. He hosts the Six Feet Under podcast with Michelle McCool, tours the 1 deadMAN SHOW, and works as an ambassador for WWE.
The timing lands in a week where the question keeps coming up. Kevin Owens returned at SummerSlam and said he intends to give everything he has even if it costs him years. Brock Lesnar lost to Oba Femi in Minneapolis and told the crowd he is the past. AJ Styles, the man on the other side of the Boneyard Match, retired at the Royal Rumble in January.
