On a recent edition of his “Six Feet Under” podcast, The Undertaker recalled losing his cool and retaliating with actual attacks after being repeatedly hit in the neck by Giant Gonzalez at WrestleMania IX.
The WWE Hall of Famer said, “He snapped me. He made me crack. In the 90’s, I burned the candle. In 93, I’ve got zero juice. No pull, no stroke. We were still doing double shots. We’re out three to four weeks straight, working every day. It was Indianapolis was the first show. Bell time was noon, and then we went to Cincinnati. I had a late night. I had been telling George [Giant Gonzalez], ‘I don’t care how hard you hit me with the forearm smash, just hit me in the shoulder blades. That’s all I ask. Hit me in the shoulder blades, I’ll sell for you, and we’ll do what we came to do.’ Every time, he’d pull me down, grab me by the back of my head, and I’m expecting the shot across the shoulder blades, and he’d hit me across the back of the neck. I was as patient as long as I could be. We’d go back to the dressing room, ‘George, when you pull me down,’ I would grab another person and show him the shoulder blades. ‘This is your landing zone. Hit me as hard as you want, just hit me here.’ He’d shake his head like he understood. I’d go to Harvey Wippleman, ‘He got it?’ ‘He’s got it.’ Next night, same thing. We get to this double shot. I had a really late night. It was an early day. We were on before intermission. Bell rings, not even five seconds, the whole match is me bumping until the end to make him look like a monster and killer that he was. Five seconds in, he pulls me down and cracks me across the back of the neck. Once I got the feeling back in my fingers, because I’m getting stingers, I flipped. I turned around and started whaling on him. He had no clue. I hit him so fast, so many times, that he couldn’t defend himself. He tried to lean back and I’m whaling on him. I could see George The Animal Steele, who was an agent, he’s yelling ‘Stop. Stop. Stop.’ I ended up getting out of the ring; it was a countout, and I was waiting for him to come back. He came back, he was lumped up, and they held me back. I had lost it. I felt bad afterward. He was limited to what he could do, and I had enough.”
In 2023, WWE hosted the Backlash pay-per-view event in Puerto Rico, featuring Grammy winner Bad Bunny competing against Damian Priest in a Street Fight. The event garnered one of WWE’s most enthusiastic crowds in recent times.
During a recent appearance on the “Rob Brown Show,” Priest reflected on his loss to Bunny at the Puerto Rican pay-per-view event. He said,
“It’s one of those things that it goes beyond one match, one performance, one win or loss. What we did culturally was big. We set the tone for the idea that WWE would do all these events outside of the United States and have success. You listen to the crowd; you saw the records that were broken. It’s obvious that this could be done everywhere. Not to say that the company wasn’t going to go in this direction anyway, but I think it made everybody feel a little more comfortable knowing that there is a positive to come. You had Bad Bunny and myself doing something special on the island. We fought for the show, by the way. It wasn’t guaranteed that Backlash was going to be in Puerto Rico. Bad Bunny and I specifically fought for it. We fought to get others like Savio Vega and Carlito involved and other Latinos, in general, on the show. We needed them to represent. No matter where their heritage was from, we needed representation. That set the table for things like Rhea Ripley headlining in Perth and that show revolving around her. We have Berlin coming up, and that’s going to be Gunther’s domain. He was Scotland, and that’s Drew McIntyre’s domain. It’s cool that we’re going to all these different places internationally and having someone to represent them. That shows the expansion of the company, the individuals, and our fanbase growing.”