The Undertaker made a surprise appearance earlier this month on the premiere episode of WWE Raw on Netflix, where he rode his iconic motorcycle to the ring and endorsed Rhea Ripley after her victory over Liv Morgan for the Women’s World Championship.
On the latest episode of his Six Feet Under podcast, The Undertaker shared details about the appearance, revealing that WWE contacted him just one week before the show. He explained the challenges he faced leading up to the event and why it caused him stress. Here are the highlights:
On the backstage environment: “I may have been the most stressed out person [about his appearance.] I’m like, searching my brain for memories of the day like I don’t ever remember seeing anybody scrambling or hectic or running to make sure they were there. Everybody just chill, like again, doing TikTok. It’s crazy to me. Man, it’s a whole another era. And bless their heart, they’re doing phenomenal, and I did. I got an opportunity to tell the, you know, to tell the talent that and which, I think, you know, was good for me, and I hopefully, you know, made them feel good to hear from somebody who’s been through every kind of iteration through the company. But so we came up with the idea. They came up with the idea of me riding the bike.”
On when he was asked to be part of the show: “A week out. It started out with, ‘Hey, you come into LA?’ Then it’s like, ‘Well, we’re thinking, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?’ When the bike idea came up, I started getting pictures of motorcycles. ‘What do you think about this bike? What do you think about this bike, right?’ And it was just like, I got like, four or five different people sending me pictures of motorcycles. And I mean, like, ‘Okay, I’ve already seen this bike. I’ve already said no to this, you know.’ So I’m already starting to get like, a little bit of like anxiety about, like, ‘Okay, are they gonna get the right bike?’ Because the bike matters when you’re riding inside of an arena and you’re working in tight spaces, which is incredible, and I’ll get to this in a second about this new arena…But anyway, I got there. So I’m getting all these pictures right, and I think I finally got it narrowed down, and somebody else, random, that hadn’t been in the text thread, seems to be a different bike. And I’m like, ‘No, this bike isn’t gonna work. The forks are too extended. It’s too long.’ So finally I get there, I see the bike, and like, ‘Okay, this is, this is doable.’ I said, ‘Now let me go out, look at the arena,’ and check it out, right? And it’s like, ‘Okay, here’s the bike. You’re going to go straight out here, and then you’re going to make a left turn and go up the aisle.’ The aisle is this wide, right? I’m that wide. I’ve got to come up the tron, and then I’ve got to make a left, up this, up the aisle way, and it’s a big old Road King Bagger. It’s a big, wide bike. And so, you know, here I come. I’m coming up the ramp, and so I go to make the first right turn. The first time, I make the right turn. I go in front of the hard camera, and I’m about to turn in front of the announcer position and the two cameramen. They’re like, right by the ring, and they decide at the last second they want to get out of my way. So they just dart in front of me, right? They just, and I’m like, ‘Ah.’ I have to break immediately so I don’t run over a cameraman. I’m like, ‘Geez, guys, come on.’ These are the same camera guys, which are professionals. They’re the best in the world, the WWE production and camera. They are the absolute best at what they do. So I go around, and then I go back up the aisle. And, you know, they’re asking, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I’d like to do another run, just without the potential for running anybody over, right?’ They said, ‘Yeah, sure, we got plenty of time.’ So I back up, you know, I got a lot of room to work in this little area. So, you know, I back the bike around, back it up to the starting spot here. I do it again, make the turn. So this time, as I go to, I’ve come up the aisle, and I’m about to make my right turn. So there’s another camera guy on the apron, and then he’s got his, I don’t know what they’re called, the cable puller. Yeah, he is on the outside of the barricade. Well, all of a sudden, I don’t know what he thinks, so I’m making the turn, and he jerks the cable up right in front of the bike. Like, yeah, like, I don’t know if he was, like, gonna go over my head or he didn’t want me to run over it, but he damn near clotheslines me. Now I’m pissed right now I’m cussing at everybody, like, geez. And, you know, like, I know how important this, this, this is going to be, yeah, well, just the whole thing, like, I don’t want to be the guy that wrecks his motorcycle on the premiere of Netflix,” People are gonna be, ‘See, The Undertaker can’t ride his motorcycle anymore.’ I’m already thinking about all this. It came out great, yeah, when we did it. But another thing that I didn’t factor in were people being in there, right arms extended right. And I’m up here, you know? So it had, it had some ape hangers on it, and I’ve been in that situation before. And sometimes people get a little overzealous, and they want to touch you, and they want to grab you. Well, it doesn’t take much of a little bit of a throttle push and a grab the other hand, and then the hand comes off the clutch and yeah, it’s just a recipe for disaster. You got five feet till you hit a yeah, you’re hitting kids, right? But everybody was really cool. They didn’t, you know, they didn’t grab me or anything. And the ride around the ring was good.”
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
