During his appearance on After The Bell, The Undertaker spoke about the early issues that he had with The Big Show coming to the WWE and how despite those issues, he’s one of his closest friends today. Here’s what he had to say:
He has not only as a performer but as a human being. I love him to death. I really do, and I consider him one of my close friends now, but he came in riding off that big WCW hype train. So when he first came in, he thought he was the s–t and treated people like they were less than him, and I don’t tolerate that. He had to understand one, what he was. It was a gift, and the way he tried to work initially was just wrong because he had a gift. His size was his gift, and the fact that he was so athletic.
He wanted to be able to do all these things, and for me, watching it just didn’t work because it took away all the things that made him special. It took away. It made him like everybody else. It took me forever to get him to realize that you are a giant. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you need to do something, and now we’re back in the context of a wrestling match. And it took me forever to get him to realize that he was a giant. His heart was in a good place because he wanted to work. He wanted to show people how athletic he was.
He devalued himself, and then on the on the human being aspect, it took a while for him to realize that because we are the talent doesn’t make us any better than whoever’s pulling the cables or whoever you know is setting up. There were a few instances where he treated some people pretty bad, and he got the crooked finger pointed at him quite a bit. I didn’t do it because I was trying to be mean to him. I was trying to help him reach his full potential not only as a performer but as a human being. Not that it was necessarily my role to but I knew there was a lot there, and I wanted him to excel on all levels.
You can listen to the podcast below:
Credit: After The Bell. H/T WrestlingInc.