Original subtitles

This is hell in the cell. The structure is over one ton in total weight. Once

you get in there, there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run when that door is cut

and padlocked. There's got to be a cane!

The fact that I'm tougher

than nails, the fact that I'm the man here.

He just called me Taker.

If Shawn Michaels back then was on fire, I probably wouldn't piss on him to put

him out.

Shawn Michaels, take one.

I grew up in a small town about two hours north of St. Louis, Missouri.

I was a very good football player. I was going to play in the NFL, and I

suffered a very serious knee injury, which dashed those hopes.

And all my life, all I ever wanted to do, ever since I was a little kid, all I

wanted to do was play sports.

I mean, that has always been my dream, was to be a professional athlete.

And there is the monster!

I was able to achieve that through WWE and through...

Kane character. And he connects with a clothesline off the top. That feeling of

being able to touch people emotionally, it's just the greatest gift that anyone

could have.

I never thought that that could happen for a person like me.

I always thought that in the end, I had these dreams of...

Being a professional athlete and being a famous person and all this stuff, they

were dreams.

Never dreamt that those dreams could actually come true.

Who you admire, Elvis, Jim Morrison, you know, James Dean, which are all the

idols in my life. And there's something common about the way they all live their

life or whatever. They were all very rebellious, reckless kind of people.

And it's been glorified a little bit, and maybe it's not right.

But the world is full of those kind of people, and I'm one of those people.

Where Shawn Michaels and I are today and where we were at back then on a

personal level, it's...

taking a complete 360. And if Shawn Michaels back then was on fire, I

wouldn't piss on him to put him out.

It's not like there was a bunch of animosity. It's just we were just two

different personalities. I was very outgoing, which is to say I was overly

obnoxious. And Mark's always been a very quiet, laid -back kind of guy. Very,

again, we always say cool -handled, very Clint Eastwood -ish type.

And I was not.

But... That being said, there's no one that I would rather be in the ring with

than Shawn Michaels.

When it came to bell time and we were looking across the ring at each other,

knew there was going to be something really special.

You know, Shawn was way ahead of his time in

the things that he could do athletically.

You take Sean back in 97, and you can plug him in and what they're doing right

now. Wouldn't miss a beat.

The gift that Sean has, he knows how to get you invested in the story.

That's what's setting him apart, his psychology and his ability to tell a

story the way it needed to be told.

When I first came in, I was this scary monster that everyone was terrified of.

remember vividly making my entrance and looking and seeing kids crying.

And, you know, I think everybody has a little bit of darkness in them anyway.

And I think I tapped in on that, and it kind of became cool to have that dark

element to your personality.

Prior to this entire sort of storyline between The Undertaker and Shawn

Michaels, there had been times over the years when people within the WWE

had presented, how about a Shawn Michaels heartbreak kid against The

And of course, at the time, Vince McMahon was very emphatic about those

never be in the ring with each other.

You have these two strong personalities, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker, that

when they collide, and what is the finality of that?

Because you have to keep both guys whole. You have to keep both of those

attractions strong.

There was sort of a situation arose to where, again, Mark and I were just sort

of the only two people left.

We found ourselves, I think, in a place creatively where, well, we'll just put

it out there for one pay -per -view.

It just went so well

that, you know, we continued to go with it. And then I got with Hunter and

Degeneration X.

Then it began to make a little bit more sense.

That we as a group, Degeneration X, could have what it took collectively to

The Undertaker down.

Here you have this killer, monster, unstoppable force.

And you're going to put him in this cell with this obnoxious, arrogant

character. You just guess, oh, this is going to be great. He's finally going to

get his.

So I think that's kind of what manifested was the fact that, oh, my

Undertaker is going to have no mercy on Shawn Michaels, and there's no way

anybody can help him. He is going to get lit up.

life when you mess with me. You're going to have to pay the price. You're going

to have to come like these kids to the dentist.

My own personal dentist, Isaac Yankum, DDS.

Next.

My career before Cain, dunk.

I've been given opportunities, but they weren't anything that I could really do

very well.

The character Isaac Yankum, DDS.

And then you had the Diesel character.

Diesel!

Which was an imitation, and those never work out very well.

I thought that was going to be it.

I thought that I would have a very short career and one not noteworthy of

anything. So here you have this guy, and Vince told him, if you want to be

successful in this business, you have to have a little bit of...

What that meant was you have to be able to go out there, and sometimes you have

to do the right thing for yourself because it's the right thing for the

Glenn was just a really nice guy.

Scary.

You know, could rip your head off without blinking an eye probably, but a

genuinely nice human being.

And that's great, but sometimes in this business, and especially in that era,

you had to be able to stand up for yourself, and you had to have a little

it.

And by the time that Kane came along, I think he had realized that, and he

knew that it was his last chance.

Despite my early on failures, I'd always kept a good attitude, and I was a

professional.

I think that Vince looked at me as someone that, you know, he thought that,

you know, this kid can do something. It's just a matter of getting him in the

right spot.

So in spitballing, a lot of times as you're going through creative, you throw

out some wild ideas and you start telling stories maybe to convince

to convince everybody else in the room.

And I got on a roll and I asked the question, I said, hey.

What if the undertaker had a brother?

No one knew about this brother.

And his name was Cain.

He was in a fire at the funeral home where you were growing up and has been

ever since.

And years later now, his brother Cain had grown up and

had this deep -seated resentment.

that his brother, the Undertaker, had never come to check on him. Didn't care

he was dead or alive, because that's the story that he had been told all these

years. I remember they wanted initially to name the character Inferno, which,

like, Inferno, that ain't good at all. But Bruce Pichard had always been a fan

of the name Kane. In fact, Undertaker was originally... A man named Kane.

And Bruce's son is named Kane.

As a matter of fact, my son's first public...

uh baby picture when when we got them home i actually put the cane mask on him

the infant just you know and and took that and when i brought it into

and showing everybody hey here's my daughter and here's my son gay mask

the concept that i had for Kane was,

it was like Michael Myers or Jason, you know, this strange killer who had

escaped and basically in coveralls or whatever.

And so when I got the first concept of the Kane costume, I was scratching my

head because it looked like a superhero.

So I called Vince and discussed it with him. And that's when one of the times

that I realized that the guy's a genius because he says, well, you know, yeah,

we could do that.

But if you think about it on a deeper level, he's like.

Kane has been scarred. So his ego has been shattered.

So he's overcompensating for the shattered ego by becoming a superhero.

I'm like, well, I never thought about that. It sounds good to me. Vince is

the operative word is cool.

He wanted everything about Kane to be cool.

And then I'm sitting there and I'm watching Raw and Paul Bearer starts

about Kane.

Just like everybody in this room.

I'm thinking, this is really going to happen.

Because they're already investing TV time into character.

So I'm watching all this and I'm like, wow. This is a big deal because they're

telling a story and they're actually getting into the mythology of The

Undertaker. I was with Ping last night.

He's waited 20 years to face his brother.

I think it was really intriguing storytelling. You know, the back story

everything that we would eventually find out as we went through all this, I was

happy for Kane to get that opportunity.

I have to express myself.

If I want to grow my hair long, believe me, I'm growing my hair long.

And then the story sort of shifted to Undertaker and Shawn Michaels and we

forgot about Kane.

I want to put a couple tattoos on my body.

I'm going to put tattoos on my body.

Many of my interviews on live television in those days were pretty pointed.

If I want to pierce my belly button, I'm going to pierce my belly button.

I didn't meet around the bush a lot. People, for the most part, knew where I

stood on a number of different issues.

I want to come out here and look like a blithering idiot on live TV.

Believe me, I'm going to do it. Why?

Because I can.

One time in particular, I was just sitting around in the back, just sort of

being silly, stuffing things in my shorts and whatnot, and someone made

offhanded remark of like, you don't have the balls to go out there like that. I

went out there with this gauze in my shorts, clearly misrepresenting myself.

Just really overly, you know, grinding and whatnot.

And then I was jumping up in J .R.'s face. He was livid.

I told you once.

And I've told you a thousand times, if I go down, I'm bringing everybody with

me, and I'm going out in a blaze of glory.

We had a point to where, into my promo, stop, Undertaker comes up, he says his

lines.

Hello, boy.

Welcome to my own personal hell.

All that idea, oh, I'm scared and all that, and we end it.

And, of course, so I did all of that, knew where we would cut to the

break, and then on my own, just for fun, off camera, Undertaker!

I went on and said something to the effect, and, you know, some of the

Undertaker were so big and bad and tough, he'd come out here and face me

now. Counted to ten, thus, you know, in some people's mind, burying the

Undertaker. Man, this guy pissed me off.

I didn't say a word to Sean when he came back. I was so mad.

I was so angry. I didn't want to say something that I would regret. I didn't

want to get into a confrontation with Sean right there.

So I got home from the road, and I got a call from Vince.

You know, he read me the riot act, fined me $10 ,000.

But in hindsight.

Vince came back and said, you don't have to go. Damn, that's attitude, pal.

That's attitude right there. That's what we need more of that.

There were a lot of times in my career where I angered a lot of people, but I

think on that particular evening, I angered absolutely every person.

You know, I mean, he had that knack, even in our world, to kind of even add

extra spark by doing things like that.

There were a lot of things that Sean did that I didn't agree with, but I knew,

always knew, bottom line, when the bell rang, everything was going to get paid

off.

Anywho, it was an eventful time just getting to Hell in a Cell.

I can remember mentioning to people that...

Years, you know, prior in the Omni, the old George Championship Wrestling, Buzz

Sawyer and Tommy Rich had this cage that had a top on it. So, of course, in my

mind, I asked the WWE, you know, and Vince and I'm like, hey, can we do

something where it's not the standard cage match, but we can put a top on it.

And they said, well, let us play with it. And, of course, they ended up doing

what the WWE does, which is taking sort of something simplistic and then turning

it into what is now.

Hell in a Cell.

It was explained to me that the Hell in a Cell concept, that was actually built

for Kane.

Because everybody who created it wanted this idea where it was Shawn Michaels

and Undertaker inside a structure that it was all about them. And no one could

even think that anyone else would get involved.

It was a pretty ominous looking deal. It was really cool. And to know that you

were... about to be, you know, involved in something historic within the

business, which was cool, too.

You walk in and you go like, holy cow, that is awesome. My first thought was, I

got to get on top of that.

And that's exactly what came out of my mouth. And, of course, everybody's like,

well, no, you can't get on top because the whole point of it is the cage.

You know, it's to keep you two in.

It's just that, oh, I'm getting on top of that. That's one thing I had

learned by that time in my career.

There is only one first at something.

And if you were the first at something, you know, it's history in the making,

baby.

Bad Blood was in St. Louis, which is my hometown.

I went and visited my parents and saw a friend of mine. And my buddy offers to

give me a ride to the arena.

And my folks lived in a small town about an hour and a half north of St. Louis.

So my friend pulls up, and his wife had taken the good car.

So he pulls up.

And, I mean, calling it a clunker was giving this thing way too much credit.

was an awful save. It looked like the fenders were about to fall off.

So we're driving along, and we're talking and stuff.

And, again, it's about an hour and a half trip.

And smoke starts coming out of the stereo.

And I look down. I'm like, dude, your car's on fire.

And he's like.

Oh, man.

And so he started to wave the smoke.

And then all of a sudden, there's a pop.

And now we're rolling down the road. We're no longer being powered.

And he pulls over. And now I'm hot. Because, Mike, you are kidding me.

This is my big break.

And I'm going to miss the whole thing because of this car.

He calls a friend of his who is actually on the way down to this show. And this

was hours now. It's like 9 o 'clock.

But I'm thinking I'm going to be late.

We'd get in the other car, and I was actually still early getting into the

because I had left so early.

Needless to say, the day didn't quite start like I had wanted it to.

Something that has never happened before is just about to happen, gentlemen.

Hell in the cell. The cell itself is being lowered. Very tough.

And I have never seen an apparatus ever quite like this.

This was The Undertaker versus Shawn Michaels.

I mean, this could have been the main event.

at WrestleMania.

It was that big.

And they went out and they had a WrestleMania caliber match.

With The Undertaker.

With Shawn Michaels.

We're just about ready for hell in the cell.

You're in there with The Undertaker.

Kane's debuting.

My job is so simple and it's to get beat up.

Just how can you take the best in the world. That's fun.

Michael's got to get on a bicycle and ride.

Oh!

Michael just literally bounces off the canvas.

And his feet just hit the roof of the cage on that back body drop from the 6

1⁄2 Undertaker. Look at this. Undertaker.

From the ring post to the cell. Pillar to post. Pillar to post.

That's hell in a cell right there. The match itself was just unbelievable.

You just have Shawn at his very best just getting the tar beat out of him.

then, of course, you have The Undertaker at his very best beating the tar out of

Shawn.

It's methodical. It's a physical dissection of Shawn Michaels.

Undertaker, no hurry.

This is just prolonged in the agony.

And I think The Undertaker likes it.

He did.

He definitely took a ass -kicking that night. The cell itself just presented

more opportunities for me to brutalize John.

And, man, I did.

Michael's is like a rag doll.

The cell was supposed to keep everybody in and everybody out. It's not supposed

to be used as a weapon.

Michael's body must feel like it's been in a car accident.

Oh!

Michael's hammering a light on the undertaker. Look at that.

Michael with an opportunity.

Could it be that Michael somehow pulls off a victory here tonight?

On the top of the steps.

We needed to pull that off. If people were going to think of him, he might

some kind of chance of getting out of it.

Michaels with the cover.

Don't do it. He did it. No.

Michaels coming right back.

I have a moment where we're trying to get him out. And in that process, I'm

getting out. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Michaels is out.

Michaels is out of the cage.

Bleeding just, it ups the intensity in anything. And especially,

I had the ability, rightly or wrongly, to bleed a lot.

John Michaels has been lacerated.

Michaels with a kick to the groin area.

The cameraman is...

I knew that I wanted to take a backdrop up there. I knew I wanted to get press

slammed.

The steel girders are spinning. They're about to break.

And I'm like, holy crap.

Then, you know, you just kind of visualize it in your head.

Think about being that high in the arena, and then, you know, it just kind

steamrolled into what I'd call a beautiful train wreck.

And then, of course, I know I want to, you know, I got to go through a tape.

And then you're just up there and looking, okay, can I make it?

No!

This may come as a huge shock to people, but I'm not a big thinker.

My God, he made me broken in half.

Somebody's got to help him. I've never seen anything like that in my life.

And especially when I'm out there.

I mean, most of what I did was instinctual. It just sort of came.

I don't try stuff. I don't practice stuff. I just look and I go, yeah, I'll

it. How in the hell is Michael standing?

Absolutely ungodly. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

Nothing like that had ever happened before.

And then they keep on going.

And you're like, man, this is something else.

Oh, no.

It was all, you know, watching as a student of the game and also as a

fan. This is textbook of how you have a match like that. I mean, it was as close

to perfection as you could possibly get.

Just the flow of the match. It started in fifth gear, and it only kept going,

I'm really proud of that match.

Nobody, nobody envisioned what was going to come out that night.

Oh, my God. Wait a minute. It's Paul Bearer.

It's Paul Bearer.

And that's got to be, that's got to be Kane.

That's got to be Kane.

I was really nervous because, I mean, you know, this was my big break.

And also, this is The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels.

And I just didn't want to mess it up.

The size of this human being.

Or is that a human being?

That was the first time when I walked through the curtain. It was the first

I'd ever heard Kane's music.

Of course, I didn't get to hear Vince yelling, that's gotta be Kane.

That's gotta be Kane!

But it was, I mean, the crowd went nuts.

Taker was big then.

Taker was, I don't know, 6 '10", probably 305 at that time.

Glenn was gigantic.

And then Kane comes out with his huge self and his black and his red and he's

just so ominous looking.

After this battle that had gone on and on and on, Kane just comes out and rips

the door off the cell.

Glenn Jacobs Kane is one strong son of a bitch. Oh, it was a gimmick door.

They had a rig.

It's a heavy ass door.

The costume, the entrance, and all of that was just so awe -inspiring.

It's the only way we could have ended that match because we did so many

things. You have to top it off with something equally or more impressive.

And the debut, and the flame, and his presence is what carried that.

The eyes, you look into someone's soul.

And you may not see someone for years, and they may look a lot different many

years later, but when you look into their eyes and there's a connection, you

feel that.

So when Undertaker is first confronted by Kane, we're all looking and

who is this? What is this?

And that one reaction by the Undertaker, when Undertaker looks into the eyes of

Kane and realizes, you're my brother.

That's what made it special.

There was so much backstory there that I had to tell.

Without saying anything. My thought process, not being a technically trained

actor, I was just trying to live the story in my head.

People had really never seen The Undertaker in a human sense, I guess.

You know, it's always been this cold, calculated killer.

Now you get to see a little glimpse of something deeper.

Boom. He tombstones me.

This is shocking.

That happens. Out he goes. I drape the arm.

And it's just, you could hear the gasp in the building of like, oh.

When it goes like that, and you know you've hit it out of the park, it is a

grand slam home run when they're like, oh, my God, he's going to win.

That's one of the greatest feelings that you can have is when you go out there

and you know that you've done something that's going to stand the test of time.

And we knew right away that we'd gone out there and done something really,

really special.

I don't say this to be conceited or whatnot, but we knew there were not a

people in the business that could have done what we did that night.

I'm biased, but it was the greatest debut in history.

Wow, Shawn Michaels from the 90s to today, two different people.

Shawn was difficult to deal with.

But at the end of the day, he was the best. Shawn Michaels was the best.

And no one can ever take that away

from him.

Today, I think Sean has just grown up like the rest of us and let what was

inside come out.

I look back on all those things now, and I wouldn't change any of them or

anything in the world because there aren't many people in this line of work

live with the joy in their life and the peace in their heart more than I do. So

I don't think I'd change the path I've traveled, not one bit.

Everything that...

I've been able to accomplish or achieve in my career really is based off of what

happened at Bad Blood in St. Louis.

And all that is based off the fact that a guy named Mark Collier, the

Undertaker, was willing to take a chance on me.

A very, very impressive person is Glenn Jacobs.

There has not been anybody that has been more loyal.

more trustworthy, more dependable than Kane.

I mean, I can't say enough about the human being. The wrestler, yes,

Phenomenal in -ring entertainer, a legend, all that. But as a human being,

far exceeds even his success in the ring.

A few years ago, I was going to a concert in Knoxville, and I was out in

concession area.

getting a soda for my wife and me, and this lady comes running up to me with

daughter. She wanted to show me a picture on her phone, and it was a

me and her son.

And I'd made a visit to Children's Hospital recently, and that was the

picture. She told me that was the last picture that she'd ever taken of her

And it was with me.

So, you know, she wanted to thank me for doing that. And, you know, the

greatest blessing that my career gave me, you know, wasn't the fame and, you

know, money and all that stuff.

It was the fact that, you know, you have the ability, if you use it, you know,

to at least in some little way bring joy to people and touch them emotionally.

And that's incredibly powerful.

And that's another thing. I don't know why I was given that, but it's something

that I don't take for granted and something that I value very much.