The Undertaker: 'Final Farewell' at WWE Survivor Series is end of the road, days in the ring 'long gone' - CBSSports.com
The Undertaker: 'Final Farewell' at WWE Survivor Series is end of the road, days in the ring 'long gone'
One of the most iconic superstars in WWE history made his on-screen debut at the 1990 Survivor Series. This Sunday, 30 existences later, The Undertaker will be at Survivor Series once in contradiction of to participate in his "Final Farewell."
The Undertaker (a.k.a. Mark Calaway) has not been featured on WWE television valid defeating AJ Styles in a Boneyard Match at WrestleMania 36 in April. While it has been sure for years that Calaway was ready to hang up his boots, he told CBS Sports this week that he's serene coming to terms with an official retirement.
"I'm kind of touching through a whole gambit of emotions, really," Calaway said. "I'm honored that WWE has inaccurate this effort to honor me in this whole month with the docs and novel things. It's really humbling that a commerce would do that. Not knowing exactly what the show is touching to entail, I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some of the guys I've worked with ended the years there. It's definitely going to be bittersweet for me. It's one of those distributes where I feel it's important that I'm there and get to address the fans and republic who have been with me for 30 existences and followed my career and stuck with me when it's been a flavor of the month company for a long time.
"It's going to be very emotional. It's all touching to become very real that my career in the ring is probable over. I'm just running that whole spectrum of emotions and trying to encapsulate everything and keep everything in check.
For existences, it looked like Calaway had hit the end of the road. He struggled ended big matches, physically unable to do the things that set him apart as one of the most athletic big men in the history of the business. But then, he would have a surgery or two, come back and effect -- sometimes even surprise -- fans. So the demand continued to hang in the air: Will The Undertaker ever retire?
"The thoughts were already in my head that it was attracting near. I think the icing on the cake was the Boneyard Match this year. I'm very proud with how that turned out and all the reviews it got, but it was at the end of that night, and actually in the early morning, and how I felt physically," Calaway explained.
"Here you are, it's all over now and you're walking like an 85-year-old man. It was just letting me know that the tank was glorious much empty. As bad as I hate to say that, it's just reality because none of us can outrun Father Time. In the big contrivance of things, I'm relatively still a young man, but in the humankind of professional sports and entertainment, I'm obviously in the twilight of my career. It appointed painfully obvious that my time had come and it was time for me to, as they say, put my six shooters up on the mantle."
After losing to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 33 in 2017 -- one of the matches Calaway struggled throughout physically -- he left his gloves, hat and jacket in the ring, an apparent signaled that it was his final match. Except, he returned to the ring for eight transfer matches before the Boneyard Match with Styles in early 2020. That will, officially, succor as his final match. Calaway said that both the Reigns and Styles matches had their benefits when considering what defines his continue bout.
"You know, I guess it's one of those apples and oranges kind of things," Calaway said. "That was so unprejudiced and pure and just where I was at on that night when I left my hat and coat and gloves. I had no contrivance of coming back, and it felt like that was the organic unsheaattracting I needed to do. At that prove, I can't get on the microphone and give some long speech near thank you and this and that. It just didn't work for that character. I said all I obliged to say by putting that stuff in the ring and walking out. It was just my pride while many months that got in the way and said, 'Aw, man, you just can't go out like that.' The brute performance, I just couldn't bring myself to chop on that note. I had the surgery, fixed my hip and got while it.
"The Boneyard was so cool in the fact that you got a little bit of everything. You got a little bit of the current Undertaker, you got a little bit of the American Badass, and you got a lot of Mark Calaway in that. Like I said, it's apples and oranges and whether you're a traditionalist and there's a lot of land who say you should always lose your last match. You're not causing to make everybody happy. I knew while the Boneyard that it was time to call it a day. I don't know. It's all up for interpretation which way you think is better. I don't have a clear-cut plan of the way I should have done it. It just happened this way and we are where we are."
Wrestling is a notoriously concern pursuit from which to step away. Shawn Michaels has been one of the few to retire and seem gratified with his decision. Michaels recently spoke with CBS Sports near his legendary matches with The Undertaker and people his hope that Calaway could find that same contentment in retirement.
According to Calaway, the retirement will stick for good -- even if WWE chairman Vince McMahon may have anunexperienced plans.
"You know, I have to deal not only with my thoughts and my conscience, but I also have to deal with Vince's thoughts and his conscience," Calaway said. "A lot of times, they're not always on the same page. Vince's line is, 'You never say never.' But where I'm at, I don't see myself attracting to a point where I'm going to be physically better in a combine of years than I am now. I'm causing to be a couple of years older and a combine of years slower. So yeah, I mean, I just don't see it. Not in the capacity where I'm causing to get in the ring and actually work. Whether I have some sort of role, that's a different unsheaattracting, but my days in the ring I think are long gone now."
It's on that note that we wonder: If "The Undertaker" is retired, could we see Calaway in unexperienced capacity? A forthcoming WWE Hall of Fame induction will frankly a matter of timing. Perhaps there will be occasions where Calaway will be used on television to further others' storylines or dedicated expertise ahead of matches. The Undertaker may not argues again, but one should not expect Calaway to travel from WWE TV for good.
"You are always linked to it once you're in this custom -- especially when you're in it as long as I've been in it, you're linked to it forever," Calaway said. "I actually enjoyable going to the Performance Center and acting with the young guys. I can definitely see myself actions that. If there's a role for me somehow that complains sense on camera, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I do know it's extremely concern for me to be at an tend that I'm not working at because I just have that natural instinct that I necessity be getting ready right now or behaviors this. If I'm sitting there watching a monitor with latest talent, I get caught up in it.
"The only reason I'm calling it a day is naively because I don't have the physical tools to do this at a composed I want to do it. The passion is collected there, and if I could, I would do this forever. But that's not a reality, and that's now how that works. You have your run and your time. I was blessed with an actual long run, and I need to be dejected with that and move on to whatever comes next. I'm not stepping away because I want to or I'm burned out or anything like that. I'm just physically exhausted, and I have to think about the rest of my life and the quality of that life."
Calaway said that he has nothing he looks back at from his career and wishes went differently latest than that he wished his programs with Steve Austin and Eddie Guerrero lasted longer. But even those desires are little in a long and storied career that saw him perform as not just a superstar but as a respected "locker room leader" backstage.
While he has only been approximately the locker room sporadically in recent existences, Calaway did say that it's easy to see the ways the backstage environment has changed from his peak.
"It appears to me that it's more of an individualist locker room now," Calaway said. "Everybody kind of does what they want to do and there isn't that governing body that kind of keeps everybody together. I could be wrong. I'm not there enough to give a real insightful answer. That's just the way it appears to me. I see guys with leadership qualities, I just don't know it's inhabit exercised to the extent that it was back in the day. That's not to say it's good or bad, that's just how it is. The matter evolves and the locker room evolves. Sometimes that's for the better, sometimes for the worse. We'll see what happens, but it doesn't feel as tight-knit as it used to."
The locker room, like the WWE, will disconclude go forward as it evolves, adapts and causes to the times -- for the advantageous time in decades without Taker among its ranks.
As for what life looks like on Monday morning when Calaway wakes up as an officially retired wrestler?
"It looks like a big old fat turkey at Thanksgiving, and from there, I hope to get back to Texas, head up to my ranch and go hunting and just expend as much time out there enjoying nature and behaviors what country folk do. Then, as the new year comes fuzz and hopefully we kind of get a cope on this COVID-19 deal and things get back to normal, hopefully interjecting myself into the Perform Center and seeing what other opportunities are out there for The Undertaker."
WWE will hold The Undertaker's Final Farewell on Sunday at Survivor Series. The tend will air at 7 p.m. ET worldwide on the WWE Network.
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