The Undertaker had to go straight to the ER after WrestleMania 41.
The Dead Man relaunched his Six Feet Under podcast on WWE’s official channel with his wife, Michelle McCool. The husband & wife duo talked about McCool’s days in WWE development, their current favorites in WWE, and more.
During the episode, the former Divas Champion also revealed some previously unknown details about the health struggles of The Undertaker around the time of WrestleMania 41. The female star who was inducted into the Hall of Fame during the PPV weekend mentioned how she was distraught the whole time.
Michelle discussed how many people thought it was because of her induction. In reality, she was worried about the Phenom, who ended up in the hospital on the day they returned from the Mania trip:
“I felt like when people would come up to me and congratulate me and be like ‘how you doing,’ and I am almost in tears. [I would say] I’m okay, but they could tell I wasn’t ok. They thought it was probably just because of the speech.
No, it was because of the heart issues you had been having weeks prior, which by grace of God we found out just by a God thing. But it ended up being terrifying. The day we got home from WrestleMania, the next morning at 6 a.m., we were at the hospital for a little bit of heart surgery.”
The Old School Mentality: Michelle McCool
Michelle McCool later revealed more details on the situation. Per the former champion, Taker was diagnosed to be living with chronic atrial fibrillation (AFib) for an unknown period after he underwent a heart exam in March. His heart’s ejection fraction was recorded to be only 30%.
The Attitude Era star was first given some medicines that didn’t work. Two weeks before Mania, he had to be admitted to the hospital for four nights, where he underwent cardioversion to restore normal heart rhythm. The fix, however, was short-lived, and the AFib was back within days. Taker was dealing with issues like unstable heart rate and low blood pressure over the PPV weekend:
“We were in the hospital for four nights, two weeks before WrestleMania. Yeah, you weren’t supposed to go [to Vegas]. That’s that old school mentality. I’m not mad at it, because I’d probably be the same patient, but it was terrifying.
I couldn’t focus on anything else. All I wanted to focus on was you, your heart, getting you in with the best cardiologist, which we eventually did, but that took a lot of phone calls, several nights in the hospital, lots of doctor visits, and by the grace of God, yes, you are here, but out of the words of the doctor himself, it could have turned out badly, have we not found it that day.”
Thankfully for the Hall of Famer, the second procedure was a success, and Undertaker noted that he is doing well now.