During an appearance on Lucha Libre Online’s Behind the Curtain, former WWE star Elijah Burke commented on how there was a different opponent in mind for The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 23 prior to Batista:
“It’s crazy because [at] that WrestleMania [23], the whole plan was for Sylvester Terkay and The Undertaker… and Da Pope was supposed to ride the coattails of Sylvester Terkay. I obviously had no problem with it [laughs].
They brought Terkay in [from OVW to WWE] specifically because Undertaker was, and still is, a huge MMA guy. And so, Undertaker loved the physicalness and the legitness [sic] of MMA. He wanted to create that type of magic inside the wrestling ring.”
