With a 30-year stint in WWE, Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway has inspired many of today’s wrestlers to follow in his footsteps, and is renowned as a legend of his generation. Just like those he himself inspired, Calaway grew up watching wrestlers who made him fall i love with the industry.
“You wouldn’t believe it. From where I ended up to, as a fan – so, I grew up in Houston. So, I had Paul Bosch’s Houston Wrestling, right? NWA Houston Wrestling. So I loved Mil Máscaras,” Calaway revealed during an interview on “What Do You Wanna Talk About? With Cody Rhodes” noting that people rarely believe him when he says this. “I don’t know if it was the mask and how fluid and how cool it was; I actually ended up getting to work – not against him, but on the same card – when I was in WCW.”
Calaway further pointed out that Mil Máscaras “lived the gimmick” of pro wrestling, and as one of the most iconic Mexican Luchadores, it’s not hard to see why Calaway was enamored by him. The “Deadman” then began to tell a story of bumping into Máscaras backstage, who showered with his mask on. “I just stopped, like: should I be here right now? And I was like: oh man, he even protects it back here too!” Calaway recalled. “Not that I was watching him in the shower.”
Mark Calaway took inspiration from Mil Máscaras for ‘The Undertaker’
Mark Calaway continued his story about Mil Máscaras, noting that the Luchador only briefly took his mask off to wash his face before putting it back on, adding that the weird experience may have changed the way he looked at gimmicks forever. “Perhaps later on, like, when I started really having a gimmick, I always thought back to Mil, like: this guy’s even got the hood on in the shower,” he said.
Calaway then pivoted back to his childhood watching NWA Houston, describing the show as having a much different feel than other wrestling promotions back in his day. “Back then, you got the guys that are traveling – Andre [the Giant] that was travelling, that’s the first time obviously I’d ever seen Andre. I remember, I was 12 – maybe 13 – when I … got to shake Andre’s hand,” he explained, claiming that he got to see other major names at the time like The Sheik and Abdullah the Butcher at NWA Houston.
The veteran then recalled seeing The Sheik at one of the shows in town, and how the tickets he and his friend were bought by his mom were right in the aisle. “We’re talking all week long, ‘yeah, when The Sheik comes down, yeah we’re gonna say this to him and we’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna – I might throw something at him!’ We got ourselves hyped up all week long,” Calaway relayed, adding that both The Sheik and Abdullah were fearsome to him as a kid. “Like, you believed everything they did was legit, and we were right there!”
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit “What Do You Wanna Talk About? With Cody Rhodes,” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Read the full article here
