How The Undertaker character nearly never happened
Former WWE and TNA employee Bruce Prichard was recently on Ric Flair's podcast and revealed that The Undertaker character nearly never happened. Prichard, who was preacher Brother Love in the WWF at the time and had roles backstage, was the one who scouted Taker when he was ‘Mean’ Mark Callous in WCW.
In the beginning, Vince didn’t like Mark’s look and wasn’t interested, thinking he looked more like a lanky basketball player than a wrestler. The night before their first meeting he also had a poor match with Lex Luger at Great American Bash. "Mark had a dislocated hip, but worked the match anyway because he knew that he was going to be meeting with Vince the next day," says Prichard.
"It wasn't the best match in the world and Vince didn't want to meet with him. We finally got the two together, and, as you know Mark, man, he's magnetic in and of himself and he convinced Vince that, 'hey, I'm your guy' and he took off from there."
The prime reason he was brought in was to play Hulk Hogan’s nemesis in the Suburban Commando movie. It was only after they saw him in the outfit that they knew they had something special. It made him look like an "old timey undertaker," recalled Prichard.
The original idea was to call him Kane The Undertaker and to make him a silent destroyer in the vein of Jason from the Friday the 13th movie. However, it eventually morphed into the character we know and love.