8 Vital Elements Behind The Many Faces Of The Undertaker

8. He Nearly Killed His Career Before It Got Started

In his excellent 2006 autobiography Memoirs Of A Wrestling Pitchman, former WWF/WCW announcer Gary Michael Cappetta tells a detailed story of his first meeting with Mark Calaway (misspelled Calloway in the book) in mid-January 1990. Cappetta€™s a great storyteller with an eye for detail, but his memory isn€™t perfect - he has Calaway being a rookie in 1990, when he€™d debuted in 1984 and worked the territories for a solid five years before joining WCW. As a newcomer to WCW, trading under the name Mean Mark Callous (a violent, bad-tempered character not a million miles away from the Big Evil iteration of the Undertaker persona), Calaway was very aware of the nature of the politicking in the WCW locker room, and for the most part had kept himself to himself. He asked to travel with Cappetta, who - as a professional and a family man - didn€™t normally like to travel and room with the boys, as unreliable and chaotic as their lives tended to be on the road. Uncommunicative and withdrawn, Calaway wasn€™t the world€™s most stimulating company€ so, in time honoured tradition when coaxing introverted Texans out of their shells, the announcer bought the big man a six pack to loosen his tongue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LADj1-cE-g It transpired that there was a reason for his sullen attitude. Calaway had a problem with one of the boys: a big problem, one that wasn€™t just going to go away with a couple of stiff shots in the ring and a male bonding session over beer and strippers, which was how these things normally took care of themselves. Years earlier Buzz Sawyer, an eleven year veteran of the territories, had claimed to run a wrestling school out of a local gym. Calaway, interested in breaking into the business, had laid down $2,000 of his brother€™s money along with a dozen others, but Sawyer - a notorious junkie who€™d been given the nickname €˜Mad Dog€™ for a reason - skipped town after teaching them all how to lock up, and took over twenty grand of their money with him. It took Calaway a year of working the door at Houston nightclubs to pay his brother back. When Calaway showed up in WCW, Sawyer was there, teaming with Kevin Sullivan€ and Mean Mark wanted to kill him. Even back then, Calaway was no one to screw with: a legitimate 6€™9€ with the thousand yard stare of the club bouncer and the innate violence of the born and bred biker, the Texan eventually got a moment alone with Sawyer in a deserted locker room in Cincinnati. Despite Cappetta€™s pleading that violence would cost him his job and his burgeoning career in the business, Calaway sat across from the far smaller Sawyer and made it clear where they€™d met before, and that payback was owed€ and he made no mention of money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QahEU-0e5Js Cappetta ran for help, but when he returned the two men were still sat in the same position, Calaway stony-faced as Sawyer gabbled on, trying to save face, save his skin. Eventually, Cappetta persuaded Calaway that they needed to go: leaving the arena, Cappetta says that the big Texan was terrifying in his cold determination:

€œI€™m goin€™ to break that assh*le€™s legs. His legs and his arms. All of them... That no good b*stard€™s gotta learn that he can€™t play with people€™s lives... He€™s not gonna get away with it.€

Cappetta was right: an incident like that would have killed Calaway at WCW, and made him poison to the touch at any of the other territories. This was a fork in the road€ and Mean Mark was intent on taking Calaway down the wrong lane. Had he done so, the WWF would never have seen him, and there would never have been an Undertaker. Fortunately, the matter was taken out of his hands shortly afterwards: Sawyer would suffer a compound fracture of the wrist at the WrestleWar: Wild Thing pay-per-view event on February 25th 1990, and never ended up returning to WCW. Two years later, he was dead of heart failure brought on by an overdose, and Calaway€™s bloody plans never came to fruition. A good thing too, because by the end of 1990 Vince McMahon was calling...