Hope you’re not tired of Undertaker anecdotes, because we’re not even halfway through The Last Ride.
And if the stories to continue to as high quality as his fear of cucumbers, and this one from Steve Austin on the secret origin of one of the most famous t-shirts in pro wrestling history - I say keep ‘em coming!
“Finally, the office said, ‘hey, let’s come up with a t-shirt for you. You’ve turned into ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, so let’s do some merch.’
“So I said, ‘okay, let’s do the Austin 3:16 and put a skull on the back and carve in Stone Cold, like it came from a chisel.’ Vince said, ‘Well, hold off on the skull - not so fast. I kind of feel like that might be Undertaker’s gimmick, or his property. But if you clear it with him, then, okay, we can do that shirt.’
“Sure enough, I walked over to Mark and said, ‘Hey man, office finally wants to do a t-shirt of me. I wanted to put a skull on the back, but they kind of feel like that’s in your territory. And if you clear it, I can use the shirt. But if you shoot it down, well I understand.’ He goes, ‘Yeah man, go for it.’
“I think it speaks volumes of who the guy is as a man, because the sports entertainment industry is highly competitive and merch sales are a big part of your paycheck and it’s a big part of the pride you take in moving product, because you are a viable, marketable commodity. And he was willing to share that skull with me, or let me use it. You know, no skin off his back and he was cool. He didn’t have to do that, and he did. And that’s one of the things that I’ve always thought was very cool of him to do that for me.”