WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker recently spoke on his podcast, “Six Feet Under,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including fan criticism regarding his chair shots.
Among the many notable chair shots that The Undertaker has delivered are those to Shawn Michaels, Brock Lesnar, Maven, Kanyon, Mr. Kennedy, and others. As Taker pointed out in his defense, wrestlers were unaware of the dangers of chair shots and the effects they have on people’s brains, leading to CTE and other issues.
Undertaker said, “In my defense, go back and look at the whole scope of how I swing a chair. I hit everybody the same. There was no malice. There was no, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to try and hurt the greenhorn.’ If you look at all my chair shots when we could hit. Now granted, at the time, we did not know about CTE. And I came up in a generation where that’s how you swung a chair. And I have been accused and I’m getting a little bit hot about it… I’ve been accused of smashing Kanyon with a chair because he was gay. I didn’t even know he was gay. I didn’t even know until like, years later.… I could careless…but there’s people out there that have created that rumor, ‘Undertaker smashed him.’ Undertaker swung the chair the way Undertaker swung a chair. I didn’t expect anything. If I swung a chair at somebody, the way I swung it, I’d expect the same one back. Watch me and Triple H. He beat the crap out of me. That’s just the way I learned how to swing a chair. [Bruiser] Brody hit me with a chair in my first match that I thought broke my spine. That’s just the way I came up. Knowing now what we do about head injuries. It’s a different deal. I would say, ‘Okay, make sure that you get your hands up.’”
Maven praised Taker for walking him through his chair location and explaining what would happen. He added that Taker never told him not to raise his hands.
You can check out the podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
