Original subtitles

I think of how far I've come.

And if you'd asked me back in 1995, here you are, and this is your first match

in Knoxville, Tennessee.

And you're going to stay here for probably the rest of your life, and at

point you'll become mayor of the county.

I'd have said you're crazy.

You're nuts. But that's kind of how my life has turned out.

It seems like a recurring theme.

Didn't know quite what I was getting into.

But I knew that I couldn't run from the WWE stuff.

Didn't want to. It's part of my life.

Kane is probably the greatest

story WWE's ever told.

But he paid heavy dues.

This is the Christmas creature.

That's a feast.

I think he ain't good.

I sometimes make chicken soup out of chicken.

He did not think this gimmick was going to be the best.

The deck was completely stacked against me.

He persevered. It says a lot about him. We needed to create an opponent for The

Undertaker. I got a call that WWE had an idea for me.

I realized at that moment that this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

It looked like something stopped on the machine, like Mike Myers or Jason. It

was something out of a comic book.

My God, he's on fire!

What the hell is that?

He was portrayed as a bad guy for so long, but he is a tremendous father.

We learned early on with the family that the WWE would always be right up

there, equal to us.

This looks on paper like a one -dimensional character, and he made it

more. If you needed something, you could go to Kate. You needed a monster. You

needed a great match. You needed something entertaining and funny.

I'm the greatest big man to ever do it.

I don't think anyone thought, there's the future mayor of Knox County.

Are you bleeping crazy? A big win for a big man. My goal is to be the best Knox

County mayor that I can be.

This is Glenn's birth certificate. He was born in Spain, and we had to take

down to St. Louis, the federal building, and swear that this was our child we

were bringing back from overseas.

He was 17 months old when this little picture was taken, when he was

here.

I was born in Madrid, Spain, at Torjon Air Base. My dad was in the military for

21 years.

Ten years in the Navy, he served in the Korean War on the USS Antietam, and then

switched services to the Air Force, and he was in the Vietnam War. He was a

loadmaster on C -130 cargo planes.

Glenn had a lot of attention because he was the youngest.

This one, I think he was about six on this one.

This was first grade, and this one was third grade.

He was a adorable little kid, wasn't he?

George was in military service.

We did travel around a lot, and we came back to Missouri, went up to Bowling

Green, Missouri.

We bought a small farm up there, and the older kids were in high school. Glenn

was still in grade school.

My mom was a homemaker. She took care of the family after Dad retired from the

military. He worked a lot of graveyard shifts at factories.

I didn't actually see him a whole lot because it seemed like he was just

working trying to provide ends meet.

When you envision hardworking, just decent, average people, you

think of folks like my mom and dad.

He was almost a head taller than his friends.

And his friends all teased him about being tall.

I was picked on a lot because I was just tall and awkward and everybody made fun

of me and I couldn't hide because I stuck out like a sore thumb.

By the time that I got to high school, I became a lot more popular because I

fell in with the jocks and was a pretty good basketball player.

The other teams kind of wanted to beat up on me because he was pretty good.

Sometimes their coach would put him in.

because he would intimidate some of the other teams.

I spent a year and a half at Quincy College, and then I decided to transfer

Northeast Missouri State University.

One of my great regrets in life is I probably could have been a much better

basketball player than I was. I didn't really work hard enough at that.

But I still had this dream that I wanted to be a professional athlete.

By this time, I weighed close to 300 pounds. The football coach actually came

me at Northeast Missouri State and said, with your body, you might be able to

play professional football.

So, yeah, if I switched sports, I had some eligibility left and just decided

that I didn't have anything to lose.

And so here, when he was in college, this is when he was playing football,

he loved it.

He loved football.

And this is when he got hurt.

He got hurt on the last day of practice before the season started.

My cleat got stuck in a hole as I was turning my knee, trauma ACL and some

meniscus.

He was devastated.

He'd almost cry because, you know, he said, why did I have to do that? Why did

it have to happen to me?

And yes, you know, I can understand that.

I've never gotten my knee fixed, just never really had the opportunity to do

that.

I did go to the Bears camp. I was invited to their rookie mini camp.

The first day of an NFL camp back in 1991, go through all these physicals.

No one said anything about my knee.

The next day came, got on the bus, went to the training facility.

As everybody else was taken to the practice field, I was escorted up to the

player personnel office and told that my knee injury precluded me from playing

in the NFL and giving a plane ticket home.

I'd been there for less than a day.

I picked him up from the airport, and he says, Mom, this is the worst day of my

life.

He was 24.

It was his birthday. He had to give his $3 ,000 advance back.

So he got absolutely nothing out of it.

But, yeah, that was really bad.

That trip home was one of the most devastating things that's ever happened

because I'd wanted to play professional sports ever since I could remember.

I went into a depression for weeks, months afterwards.

I didn't want to leave my room.

It was extremely difficult.

There came a point where I realized that I had to quit feeling sorry for myself,

that life was going to go on whether I participated in it or not.

At the time, I was doing some substitute teaching.

My degree is in English, so I wanted to teach and to coach.

But man, I still had this bug. I still wanted to play sports.

That was my dream in life.

And one night, A friend of mine, Mark Morton, and I are watching WWE on TV.

Mark looked at me, he's like, you know, man, you could do that. And I thought to

myself, I'm a really big guy like these guys on TV.

I'm a good athlete, despite having the bad knee.

Yeah, I should try that.

I didn't understand how he didn't break every bone in his body.

They would throw each other out in the yard, in our backyard, in the grass.

They would just get out there and just smack each other around.

Well, yeah, I thought it was funny.

He did go to wrestling school.

They had him in the ring in about two weeks.

He thought it was so much fun.

Hey, maybe there's something to this.

My first lessons were actually in a barn.

Trained there long enough to kind of get some rudimentary how to fall down

without getting hurt too badly, how to do some of the moves, and had some early

matches.

I made him a costume for him to wrestle as Angus.

More than one, and this is the only one I could find I had left.

So this is one of his shirts, you know.

that I made with Angus on it, and his pants would have been black, and we put

those down the sides of the legs.

So, yes, I made those. I made all of his costumes.

You could say that professional wrestling lifted me out of that funk and

something to live for.

I was on my way.

My dad was a big wrestling fan.

But George and I would never in 100 years ever thought that one of our kids

would have been interested in something like wrestling.

The first group I trained with was some folks out of Hannibal, Missouri.

Traveling through the Midwest on weekends, going to shows where you'd

a dozen people in the audience.

Wasn't learning anything because the people that I was working with, in many

cases, only had as much experience as I did, and had never really been outside

of that very low -level independent circuit.

They were all wrestling, and Glenn was pretty near the last one, if not the

one to come out.

And this kid saw him, and he hollered, kill him, kill him, that's my teacher,

kill him.

We thought it was funny.

George and I would go, and I would root.

George is not very, he's not very noisy, as I am.

Glenn finally told me, he says, Mom?

He says, you can't go anymore.

And I said, why?

He says, you're too noisy.

And there they are.

I was traveling all over the place just looking for a break. I did some work

with Jerry Lawler.

One year around Christmas time, Kevin Lawler, who's Jerry's son, called me.

like, hey, I got this idea for a gimmick. At this time, everybody had a

character.

All the way down to being a garbage man or an alligator skinner. You know,

everybody was something. Even a plumber.

One of them that really caught my attention was called the Christmas

This is the Christmas Creature. He is huge.

That Christmas Creature is a little vicious, isn't he? He sent me a picture,

he's like, hey, do you think you can have that outfit made?

So what did I do? I'm like, hey, Mom, do you think you can make this? Because

Mom was pretty good on the sewing machine.

I did have to sew the...

Little light bulbs on and the tinsel and all that kind of stuff and the sleeves.

Yeah, that kind of stuff I put in there.

And then he had to have white gloves and they had to be decorated up and

whatnot. Those light bulbs, they had to have a battery so that he could turn

that on.

It was really ahead of its time. It was a technological innovation.

This guy is huge. Jerry made him dress up like a Christmas tree.

And wrestling at Christmas tree.

Oh, my God. He still to this day gets pissed off about it. I don't know what

people were thinking.

I don't know how he did it. I mean,

that says a lot about the human being right there.

Coming through the curtains right now, I got the Christmas creature.

This guy is big and strange.

He gave me the chance to work with Jerry Lawler.

Over the years, people have seen Lawler, and he's wrestled everybody from...

Andy Kaufman to movie monsters.

In that regard, the Christmas creature wasn't that much out of the ordinary for

the Memphis territory.

Jerry Jarrett, my partner, watched him, and afterwards, Jerry said, have him

come to Memphis TV tomorrow.

So that's how he got started.

You're about to see the hottest show in town.

Smoky Mountain Wrestling was the island of misfit toys.

You had a bunch of guys who really didn't fit anywhere else in the big

companies, and Jim Cornette was the mad scientist behind it all. I'm looking for

a few good men, and so far I've found a bunch of them.

Jimmy, like me, saw some tapes and thought that I could do well there.

He was spawned in the valley of death.

The mighty Unabom is the demon of destruction.

Without him, I'd have never gotten my career off the ground.

We would do at least three to four live events every single week in Knoxville

and the surrounding areas of West Virginia, eastern Tennessee,

Kentucky.

A lot of folks in Smoky Mountain Wrestling were either great performers

an established career or were folks that were headed to WWE.

Jim Cornette had a relationship with WWE, so it was kind of a front door for

getting to WWE, which is ultimately where I wanted to go.

I'd never been to East Tennessee, never been to Tennessee at all.

Didn't know what I was really getting into.

No one thus far has been able to derail this big, huge man.

Back in the day, you were so cognizant of things that were topical. That was

something that was in the news, the Unabomber. So, hey, let's have a

This is your invitation to my world, a world of ugliness and a world of

darkness. I think it was just a way to...

Put Glenn in a nondescript gimmick. Give him an opportunity to learn from a guy

like Al. I have somebody that's a dear special friend to me that I want to

introduce. The ultimate wrestler ought to take the ultimate killing machine. He

was a giant guy with a kind of looked like a BDSM type of outfit with trunks

wore a red and black painted hockey mask when we did our interviews or our

promos. Never spoke and had a cape.

It was supposed to be this emotionless monster, and he would have the mask on,

and I would intentionally try to say things to see if I could get him to

to start laughing. Wait, where are you going?

Where do you think I'm going? I'm going back to have some sex!

And I'd just see him over there kind of, you know, trying not to laugh, but he'd

have the mask on.

Demon of destruction!

I met Glenn probably in the mid -90s. He was working for Jim Cornette in Smoky

Mountain Wrestling, and he was their top heel.

We detoured, made a trip to Knoxville, and as soon as I worked with him, I

I said, this guy needs to come to WWE.

He's just so talented and such a nice guy.

I got back and I talked to Vince, and I was like, we need to get this guy up

here. It took a minute for him to work his way through some horrible gimmicks.

I had to go to Memphis and USWA and spend a lot of time on the road, not

making any money, and then go to Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

Gosh almighty, look at the size of that guy.

I wasn't a goofball. I was serious about this and I wanted to succeed.

It wasn't just like I got this handed to me. I mean, I had to work really hard

just to get into WWE.

What made me fall in love with wrestling was the mixture of storytelling with an

athletic endeavor.

To have something where you could combine good and evil and the stories of

nobility and betrayal and dastardly characters and noble characters.

There's nothing else like it. It's always scary whenever Tom gets a great

Oh, man.

I think it's the greatest entertainment in the world.

When I first got into professional wrestling, I had no idea where it was

to end up.

I didn't have any other plans for my life.

I was making a living, although sometimes barely eating by.

But nevertheless, I figured as long as I could do that, that things were okay.

Smoky Mountain Wrestling was big at the time, and it was a freedom hall.

which is a little center in Johnson City.

And we would go there, and sometimes we would go to some of the high schools

where they were going to be performing.

The girls loved it. A friend introduced me to Crystal. I thought that she was

beautiful the first time I ever saw her.

She was a single mom with two daughters.

She was going to school at East Tennessee State University, pursuing a

degree in counseling.

while she was also working full -time and then working on weekends.

And Unabombed catching there.

Matt Hardy slingshot into the turnbuckles. Looks like he was a five

of flour.

Crystal's daughters, Devon and Arista, were big fans of Smoky Mountain

Wrestling, so she was aware of what I did, and she'd taken the girls to some

shows.

I loved it. I loved every bit of it. We would spend hours beforehand. I would

make my signs to hold up, and I loved it.

We were just kids, so everything was fantastic and big and real.

It was fun. I just loved the performers.

It's something we always look forward to.

And he's going for the powerbomb!

I remember that I thought he was athletic from what I watched of the

She was not impressed with my career at that point. It seemed like he was much

more agile in the ring.

She told me that if her father had still been alive, that she would have never

been allowed to date me because he held a very low opinion of professional

wrestlers.

He had been apparently wanting to go out with me for some time, and I kept

saying no.

I never wanted to date a wrestler.

I had friends.

But we're wrestlers, and I didn't see myself with someone that was a

professional wrestler.

My oldest daughter, Devin, she had broke her femur in three places and was in

traction at a hospital.

When I walked in one day, he was sitting there with her, and he had brought her,

you know, coloring books and stuff to do and flowers.

And I was like, yeah, I've got to go out with him now. So, you know, it was a

guilt trip thing.

I was able to convince her to go out with me, and she realized that I'm a

guy and really just an average, ordinary person other than doing this thing that

I did on TV.

I knew that he would be doing this.

Didn't know on what scale, but his thoughts were, you know, he would do it

year or two, make enough money, buy a house, and be done.

That was what I thought was going to happen.

That's not what happened.

She became supportive of it, but that's never been what's defined our

relationship. That's just something that I did for a living.

It is not a power bomb that this man does.

We call it the Unabomb.

I'll remember that from now on. When it came to Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Jim

Ross was doing their commentary.

He was the person that got me in my tryout that led to being signed with

Can't keep up with me, that's just too bad.

No one beats you in a bomb.

I was really excited because I had previously had a tryout. It didn't turn

very well just because I wasn't ready. I knew now that I was ready. I knew that

I could do this. So WWE signed me within a few weeks and told me that they

wanted me to fly to New York to meet with Vince McMahon.

This was the guy who was going to dictate where my future went.

was that outside factor that would control where my life was going to go.

I flew from...

Knoxville, Tennessee, to LaGuardia Airport in New York. I was picked up in

limousine. Never been in a limousine before in my entire life. So I'm

to myself, man, I've made it. This is the big time. I'm a WWE superstar.

Limo takes me to Stanford, Connecticut, and Vince looks at me.

And he asked me, Glenn, have you ever been afraid to go to the dentist?

And I said, no, because I've never been afraid of going to the dentist.

So then he looks me square in the eye and straight face says, Good. I've

had this idea for a wrestling dentist.

Isaac Yankum.

I Yankum.

Get it? And then he starts doing the Vince McMahon laugh, which I had never

heard before.

Outside of my knee injury in football, it was actually one of the most

devastating moments in my entire life because I had no idea how I was going to

pull this off.

Talked to Jim Cornette, and Jim told me, oh, don't worry about it, man. They

have these ideas.

It'll be fine. That's not going to happen. They'll figure out something

for you. Then a few weeks later, Jim comes to me, and he's like, well, I

from WWE.

It's the dentist.

I'm like, I thought you said that they weren't going to do that.

Of course, the whole thing came about because Jerry Lawler had lost a kiss

-foot match to Bret Hart and figured the way to get revenge on Bret Hart was to

introduce his wrestling dentist, Isaac Yankum, to take care of Hitman.

He was being given a great opportunity.

He tied into Lawler and Bret Hart.

Extremely aggressive.

Oh, my goodness. Take a look at Isaac Yankovic. The big, powerful Isaac

Yankovic. Controlled to the buckle and moving right in.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness.

Isaac Yankovic. His breath is so fresh.

Isaac Yankum was a terrible character for Glenn. It didn't make any sense as

as what Glenn could do. I don't think WWE understood it. They just said, we're

going to put out this bad guy dentist out there that just was kind of doomed

fail.

Clearly it was not the greatest concept or storyline or gimmick. I could see

that there wasn't a lot of mileage in it.

It just didn't make any sense to me.

Why did I get stuck with this? Why did he think that I was going to be a great

wrestling dentist? The gap between my front teeth, is that it? I have no idea.

At one point, you're really happy for him because he's doing what he loves.

Maybe not the character he loves, but he's doing something to begin that

stepping stone of showing other people what he could do. But just the whole

rotted teeth, because I was like, what have they done to your teeth?

I felt ridiculous.

I just never felt that I could sink my teeth into the character, pun intended.

I never felt like the audience gravitated like they should have.

I always felt it just came across as very campy and unrealistic.

I'm going to kick in all of the dirty, rotten, sinking teeth.

Are you ready, Summer Slam?

I thought it was a really monumental match for a guy that young in the

I just never felt like I belonged.

I felt that the deck was completely stacked against me with the Isaac Yankin

character. I remember the SummerSlam match I laid out for him.

It was one of the most complicated, very layered matches that I ever put

together. I was trying really hard to really get him over for the company's

sake.

He did a good job, and I was really proud of him.

I feel like a teacher, and he was like one of my students, and he was one of my

best students.

I don't know if Glenn ever reached a crossroads where he thought, maybe I

do something else. Glenn never said anything about the fact that maybe this

isn't working out.

I'm sure he felt that way because I've been in that position too, where you're

somewhere and you're thinking, I don't know if I'm ever going to get a chance.

I had a hard time believing that there wasn't some doubt in his mind.

Jacob, you seem to be on the rise in the World Wrestling Federation.

While I was struggling as the Isaac Yankum character, I had a TV match with

Undertaker.

It was

terrible. That was all my fault.

My heart wasn't in it, and the match was terrible.

If you can't have a good match, and you're just out there going through the

motions, you just don't make your opponent look good, which is what had

that night.

I felt bad for him.

I really did.

It was really frustrating because I knew the upside with him. I just knew Isaac

Yankum was not it. It was not going to last.

When your audience sees something and they go, oh, gosh, that's awful,

it's hard to get them back.

I mean, there's only so much you can do.

Mark afterwards told me, look, dude, if you want to stay here, you're going to

have to act like you belong here. You can't mope around.

And Isaac Yankum gets a boot to the midsection. He was not a fan of the

Yankum character either, but nevertheless, I made Undertaker look

Take it out.

Scoops up Yankum. Look at this.

Tell him, like, Glenn, if you're going to survive here, you've got to develop a

little bit of bull in you.

Not just to be an asshole.

But for the sake of the business, you've got to stand up for yourself or

you're not going to be here.

When I was in WWE, I was often on the road 250, 300 days a year. Getting in

the ring and performing was really the fun part.

Learning and traveling and...

Long nights and bumps and bruises.

That's really the beauty of this whole industry.

That's where the romance is.

They kept me around working.

I was over in South Africa on a show with WWE, and Jerry Briscoe told me,

when you get back to the States, you need to call Vince. He has an idea for

We had the Monday Night Wars, and we lost Diesel and Razor to WCW.

Where is it?

The big surprise.

This is where the big boys play, huh?

I was ecstatic.

More money, guaranteed money, so half the days and twice as much money.

He said, I've got this new role, and I'm like, what is it? He's like, I'm going

to be...

Fake Diesel because Diesel and Razor Ramon had left.

The idea was by introducing the same character

that had just left, you could have imposters who were just

as big of stars as the stars were.

And I assumed the role of the new Diesel. The company was behind it.

We were going to become tag team champions, and there was going to be a

big push behind the characters.

I'm like, oh, okay, how's that going to happen? You know, because you've got

white, short, curly hair.

It's like, well, I've got to go get extensions.

He's all in that leather, and he had the long black hair.

I was like, I like this character.

You're so hot.

They created this as a parody.

It's just that Glenn Jacobs isn't a parody of anything.

He comes back as a different human being.

He looked incredible.

Glenn's success is because of his hard work.

And he did a great job with it. The fake razor didn't do a good job with it.

Glenn did a great job with it.

I'm sure it was awkward for Glenn, but it's a job. Either that or you go home.

And I think Glenn was like, he didn't want to go home.

And I think he understood he was still in the learning process and still

climbing a ladder that he wasn't sure where it was going or how long it would

take to get to the top, but he was still, you know, somewhere on that

He is a monster.

The fake Diesel character gave me a lot of confidence. I realized that, yes, I

belong to WWE.

That's actually what was missing with the Isaac Ankin character.

I just never felt like I belonged.

Being a phony dentist, being Isaac Yankum is one thing, but then being at

a little closer to a real person gives you some confidence, an air of walking

the ring like Diesel.

That was a big step in taking the next step to being who he was going to be.

By watching me, I think he learned big man pacing.

You watch him as Yankum, he works much faster than when he works as Diesel. I

think he realized, like, no, man, slow.

You could see the transition that he felt more comfortable just walking into

ring, strutting stuff.

Maybe it's because his wife was telling him he was hot. I don't know.

You know, with the sunglasses on and the goatee and the long hair.

Yeah.

The problem is, if you ever have something that's a fake of somebody

turn on the TV and see Kevin Nash.

You can never do a parody of something when the person is somewhere around that

can still go and Kevin Nash can still go.

They wanted to prove that it wasn't us.

It was their machine.

that if they put their machine behind, they could recreate the character.

And it was just that wasn't the case.

We're like nobody else on TV.

Because of just the storyline coming to an organic end, Rick and I were taken

off TV.

We went to Memphis and worked some with Jerry Lawler there and his promotion

there.

When I was in Memphis, I got a call that WWE had an idea for me. There had been

an incident.

Where Vader had gotten arrested, he was on a talk show with Undertaker. They

were in a storyline at the time.

So we're on tour in the Middle East. We end up in Kuwait. I was world champion

at the time, and I was going to defend the title that night.

They had us on some morning talk show, from what I understand was a fairly big

morning talk show.

Undertaker knew that...

This commentator was going to ask, and the dreaded is wrestling fake question,

which I hate.

They say this wrestling is not for real. Is it like you act or?

And Undertaker told Vader, just let me handle it. Let me answer it. What we do,

if it is acting, we take a normal man and break him in half.

You know, that's such an unoriginal question for someone to ask.

Vader, as all of us old school guys used to do, you defend your business, you

defend your territory.

Vader grabs this guy and shakes him up a little bit. So I find your remark and

your question insulting.

It's not my question, it's somebody's.

Does that feel fake, huh?

Does that feel fake?

And I'm thinking in my head.

Oh, my gosh, Vader, what are you doing?

We lost Leon for a while.

He was detained in Kuwait for probably about a week or so.

We needed to create an opponent for The Undertaker because looking at what

was in WWE at the time, it was like, well, Undertaker's either faked them and

defeated them, and it had all been done.

And we had...

Damn near run out of dominant opponents for The Undertaker.

But there was a guy that, at the time, was working in

Ohio Valley Wrestling with Jim Cornette.

His name was Glenn Jacobs.

They tell me, we're going to use Glenn Jacobs. I'm instantly like, yes.

When I was in Memphis, I got a call that WWE had an idea for me.

And initially, what they needed to do was they just needed an opponent for

for The Undertaker.

I just started talking about, what if when The Undertaker debuted,

the whole time he thought that his brother was dead, his mom and dad, they

in the horrible fire. His brother died in the fire, but really?

Paul Bearer, who was mortician in that funeral parlor, took

Undertaker's baby brother Kane and raised him as his own.

Burned from head to toe, disfigured forever.

Vince is like, why are we wasting one match on this?

This is actually a storyline that we need to develop.

I realized that this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

And Paul Bearer had looked after his baby brother all these years and had fed

all these stories into Cain, telling him about how his brother, your brother

knows you're alive, but he's never once come to see you because he's too busy

being the undertaker. He's too busy in the fame and the fortune.

He doesn't care about you. He never has.

The whole time, his brother had been watching the rise of The Undertaker, and

the rage, the envy, all those emotions of a sibling rivalry, except now

these larger -than -life characters with supernatural powers. That was building

up inside this character, who would eventually be called king.

I mean, there were so many layers to this thing, but it all made sense.

It was just like a great horror movie where this guy has been kept being

developed for this one moment in time where he would extract his revenge on

older brother.

He's still trying to work out the character.

He would see something that he would think would be neat, you know, and he'd

tell me about it, and I think I can incorporate this.

The first renderings of the Kane character were...

The exact opposite of what I thought the character should look like in my mind.

I just logically thought that he would literally be an escapee from some sort

mental asylum or institution.

And he would be a lot like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers type that was

and had escaped and his entire mission in life was just destroying the object

his rage.

Can you do it sideways? You're like, you know, you're facing that way. Kind of

pick him up, just see.

There's something about two brothers fighting each other that hits a chord

families and in real life where they go, it's a nerve south of the border like

nowhere else.

Sometimes in wrestling, the payoff doesn't necessarily match the buildup.

The Kane situation is the opposite of that.

The buildup was terrifying.

It was all on an epic scale.

And then when you first see Kane for the first time, it's the bad blood pay -per

-view. Shawn Michaels versus The Undertaker, the first ever Hell in a

match.

He was my guy and the guy that I wanted.

I'm instantly like, yes, this is perfect.

We were similar size. We look similar.

It's going to be easy to sell the fact that we're brothers.

And it was a break that I thought that he really deserved.

It's probably one of the most important debuts in WWE

history. When Kane came out, absolutely jacked, bigger than Taker. That was

incredible. My age was highly 12 at the time.

I remember jumping in bed. It was so freaking cool.

It was jaw -dropping, I would say.

It made you immediately go, oh, this is no joke.

Very hard to make Undertaker feel like he's in an underdog situation because of

his character. But, man, the fans really were, like, concerned about Taker.

I remember watching the lights go off, and then they came back up.

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 canned.

That's got to be canned.

It was just amazing. For a moment, there's just this complete silence and

knows what's going on.

And then the music starts playing and then the spotlights hit. And for just a

heartbeat, no one made a noise.

When he walks through the curtain with the outfit, with the mask and the size

and the physique, that's Frankenstein's monster. Who doesn't get that?

He was a living, breathing monster that people were

genuinely a little afraid of. You didn't know what was behind that mask and what

he's capable of. And they believed the story.

The look on The Undertaker's face.

Just said, oh, my God.

What sold that moment was Undertaker's eyes saying, I know you, you're my

brother, you're Kane, without ever saying a word. And everything together

that possibly the best debut of all time.

Watch this!

That was like one of the first times ever I showed any kind of look or

that didn't say kill.

Right? There's this look of bewilderment in my eyes.

that people pick up on right away that's like whoa look at undertaker he just

always had that stern i'm gonna kill you look the

stare down if

you saw the stare down between these two long lost brothers who one didn't know

the other one was still alive and now he's coming back was incredible

It was the

first time I felt like a WWE superstar.

I mean, I realized this is what it's all about.

When I was younger, I went to a show. Hulk Hogan had come out. We talked about

blowing the roof off the place. We blew the roof off the place. I'd never heard

people get that excited about anything in my life. That was the first time that

I felt like that.

The entire world is watching me.

This is what it's all about. This is what I've worked for all those years is

this moment.

Glenn is a very smart guy.

Because of that, he's able to get into the characters.

I mean, what he did with Kane, I don't think any other human being on the

could have done.

It's remarkable what he did with Kane. To be Undertaker's brother and have to

come in with Undertaker on top.

It's like being Michael Jordan's brother.

We are going to walk through the World Wrestling Federation.

Take each wrestler one by one and destroy them.

Until we reach you, Undertaker, that is why Kane is here.

I will never fight my own flesh and blood.

For months after my debut, I just ran through everybody in

WWE, destroyed everyone on the way to showdown with The

Undertaker.

Undertaker, welcome to your worst nightmare.

That was a huge build.

He pushed me to the limits where I had to say, okay, little brother.

How much more of this will The Undertaker take?

You've messed with Big Brother one time too many.

Now I'm going to have to thump you.

And the demon who will lead you

into eternal damnation.

WrestleMania 14 arrives in Boston.

People were anticipating and excited

to actually see someone that could actually bring it to The Undertaker.

Go out to the ring, and I'm with Paul.

And get introduced, he puts his hand on my chest, and my heart is thumping so

hard that he can feel it. He's like, man, what's wrong with you? Are you

And I'm like, man, this is the biggest moment of my life as far as my

professional life.

When the lights go out, the light will only shine brighter.

I'll never forget watching The Undertaker come out and looking down the

He's walking under the torches, and they've formed a canopy of flame over

top of him. And I thought to myself for a second, I was like, oh my God, that's

The Undertaker.

I was awestricken.

And then I realized, he's going to have to beat up me. Now wait a second.

That's when I truly knew that I had arrived in WWE.

What the hell is this matchup this is going to be?

No matter what happened after that, No one could ever take away the fact that I

had wrestled Undertaker at WrestleMania.

It's going to be a first time ever, two super heavyweights, two super dominant

characters, supernatural. You got all these different elements.

They're about to lock it up. And I think we achieved that. I wanted the first

time that we went at it to be at WrestleMania.

So it was fresh. That emotion would be raw and that energy real.

As a kid growing up, I was always a fan of monster movies.

Not the kind that they had today. I mean, like King Kong and Godzilla.

To me, sitting there commentating and watching these two giants go against

other, in my mind, it was like, I'm witnessing, I'm watching this in real

This is King Kong versus Godzilla. These are two giant monsters trying to tear

each other apart.

I personally loved it, and obviously all the fans loved it. It was great.

I've never seen anybody manhandled the Undertaker like that, JR.

I've never seen anybody like Kane, man.

This body's got to be rabid from those high -impact blows from Kane.

We took three tombstones. Never, ever happened before.

So it made me an even bigger character than I had before I lost the match.

So

even

though I lost, it still was a springboard for...

propelling the character higher.

The art of professional wrestling is transmitting your emotion to the

and evoking emotions from them.

Usually we do that, we show people our emotions with our face.

Obviously, because Kane was wearing a mask, you couldn't see his face. Early

I struggled with that because Kane is supposed to be very dark, very brooding.

But he's also not emotionless. And how could I portray that emotion to the

audience? One day, I was playing with my dog. She was a St. Bernard named Annie.

And I noticed that no matter what I did, Annie would tilt her head. Now, it

would be different degrees depending on whether it's curiosity, depending on

whether I had a treat, depending on whether I whistled. But I thought that

really cool. I wonder if Kane would do the same thing.

I'd watch him in the mirror, you know, practicing.

Oh, my good God, what if I'm married, you know?

The truth! I'll tell the people the truth tonight!

Yeah, I will.

Yeah!

Glenn's always felt pressure.

He is a perfectionist, and he does want to give.

So much of himself, whatever it is that he's undertaking.

And that was something we learned early on as a family, that the WWE

would always be, I don't want to say first, but

right up there, equal to us.

And that doesn't seem fair at times.

Wanting... To be successful in whatever he's doing and giving everything that

he's got.

I used to tell him, I said, you know, there can only be one number one. And

have to learn that you've got to be okay if you're number two or number three or

number four or five. Because in the world, there's only one number one.

Did that ever stop him from trying to be number one? Oh, absolutely not.

I don't think he always liked my logic either.

So, did you like working with Taker?

Undertaker is my favorite wrestler before I got into WWE.

Talk about honor and privilege and all that. It really was to work with him.

first time I ever met Mark was 1991 or so.

Were you scared?

Well, I'm backstage. The WWE show is like, gosh, I stepped into a set of a

horror movie with this guy walking down the hall. Yeah, he's intimidating.

Yeah, so are you. Well, you don't ever think of yourself as being intimidating

because you can't see yourself. You can only see the other person.

This is good because we never talked about your business when you were

doing your business.

It's a good thing that I'm hearing these stories now.

Fire was the theme of the Kane character.

It made perfect sense because the whole storyline was everyone getting burned up

in the funeral home fire.

Our

story

is probably the greatest story ever told in WWE.

It never stopped evolving.

Which led to the Inferno match.

I had a dream!

I saw the world surrounded by fire!

After WrestleMania 14 in Boston, the next match between Undertaker and Kane

the Inferno match.

The loser must catch fire!

The Inferno match is something birthed in hell. It has never been witnessed and

is difficult and frightening to envision.

The beginning of your eternal damnation.

It's actually one of my favorite matches of all time.

I think the performance that we put on that night was done really well.

You had to be ready for anything.

Working with fire, real fire, I think is a hazard for anybody.

But again, having the attitude that you're going to make it work, no matter

it takes, whatever it takes, you're going to make it work.

You worry about the audience?

Is it going to get too hot or could someone potentially get burned?

There were a lot of unknowns more than anything with the Inferno match.

We're going to have some serious combustion, so let's get ready for it.

The first thing I can think of when JR and I are sitting in the back going over

with the format of the show, I said, JR, what is this Inferno match going to be

like? And he said, well, I'll just tell you this.

I was out by the ring when they were testing the pyro, and he said, it's

to be hot.

I said, what do you mean going to be hot? He said, it may singe your

said, no way.

It's hard to be a first in anything in this industry.

You tend to worry about something really catastrophic happening.

Look at this!

One thing that I did not equate for was the amount of oxygen that the fire

was going to consume.

I get there early, and I talk with the stunt people who he'd brought into

Hollywood about how we're going to do this. Their first reaction is, wait,

you're going to do this live?

Back then, we didn't rehearse things like we do today.

We were just kind of more fly by the seat of our pants.

And they're like, okay, we need to set you on fire so you're used to this.

Never words I thought I would hear, you need to set you on fire. So they put

some stuff on my arm and have me in long sleeve, go to light my arm on fire.

When my arm gets on fire, I go to move. No, no, no, don't move that way.

Because if you do that, you're going to inhale the flames. You need to keep your

arm behind you and just keep it moving like this the whole time.

So I'm like, okay.

The ring is surrounded by fire.

Here we go.

Trying to gain the early advantage.

You feel that, JR?

When the fire went off around the ring, we were as close as anybody.

All of a sudden, this fire came blowing up. I could smell, you know, there's a

distinct smell when something airs getting sensed.

Usually when we were doing stuff like that, I would tell Crystal, I have to do

something tonight.

It's going to be okay.

Don't worry about it. And I'd be like, just wait. Maybe don't watch it until I

call you and tell you that everything's okay.

You can't tell your wife not to watch something where you're going to be

on fire and be a freaking human inferno walking around, flame shooting off of

you.

And you'd be praying, oh, dear God, please, please, please, please, please,

know, don't let him catch on fire. Let him be okay. Let him win this one. Let

Mark catch on fire.

You're nervous, but we're young and you're doing something that no one else

ever done. You put that stuff out of your mind and you figure out how to make

work the best of your ability.

I had this surreal moment where I'm looking at myself and I'm on fire in

of about 20 ,000 people and, of course, millions of people watching at home.

Throughout the match, I'm trying to keep everything straight. I have to have

this match. I have to do this. I have to do that. Then this happens. Then I get

knocked out of the ring. Oh, don't fall into the flames when you get knocked out

of the ring because you'll probably go to the hospital with very bad burns.

Well, now my arm's on fire.

Kane, if you would speak publicly for the

first time.

Set myself on fire.

What?

Coming down the aisle, accompanied by Paul Bearer, is the challenger,

King! The first blood match with Stone Cold Steve Austin at the King of the

in Pittsburgh in 1998.

The stipulation was that if Kane won and became world champion, drew first blood

on Stone Cold Steve Austin, he'd become world champion. Of course, if he lost,

he would set himself on fire.

That was also the Hell in a Cell match between Undertaker and Mick Foley.

Wait a minute. You think he's daring The Undertaker to start this match up

there?

Vince McMahon looks me squarely in the eye and says, if Mick can't come out,

you're going to have to figure out what to do.

I ain't setting myself on fire, okay?

Let's take that off the table immediately.

There was some trepidation in my mind about whether we were going to be able

pull this match off because of Mick's physical condition.

Mankind is supposed to come out.

Undertaker is supposed to come out.

Undertaker takes a swing, hits Austin, Austin gets cut, first blood, Kane's

champion. Does not have to set himself on fire, which was top of mind for me.

The winner of this bout and new World Wrestling

Federation champion, Kane!

To become world champion was just amazing.

That first one, man, that was just so special because I joined a very select

group of individuals.

Not only is it an honor for the entire world to see, but also it's the fact

the company believes it.

WWE was taking off and going anyway, but I think that was really a booster that

shot us up to the next level.

Kane was just going to the moon. I never thought, I never believed it was

possible.

I was a celebrity who has risen to such fame as Cain.

I realized that this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Cain was just going to the moon.

It simply did not get any bigger than that.

The overall experience of this commercial was amazing.

Fans get to see me gardening, crocheting, and maybe even see my pet

collection. I never thought this would have been possible for someone like me.

mean, I dreamed about it, but I never thought, I never believed that it was

possible. I'm here today at the NBC studios in Burbank to film an episode of

Weakest Link.

Kane, you good at wrestling?

Yes. You good at anything else?

No.

Can you try and speak more clearly?

Can you try to speak more clearly, too?

I think we could bring her and make her a disciplinarian or authoritative

figure, the demented schoolmarm, if you will, and she'd do great.

She might scare everybody backstage, though.

Kane, in psychology, who introduced the theory of the Oedipus complex?

Sigmund Freud.

What French national heroine was burned at the stake in 1431?

Joan of Arc.

I am the strongest link.

Goodbye. I think the key to longevity in WWE is the ability to reinvent

yourself. Through the years, it changed a lot from where I was a silent brooding

character to more of like an actual superhero.

Don't you realize when you jumped on Kane, you jumped on me. As easy as

it is to relate to two brothers fighting, it's also very relatable to

make up.

When they realized that we're family and that we're blood and that we're

stronger together than a phone.

And when we finally brought the two brothers together as a tag team and

of destruction were born, now the audience was happy.

Undertaker and Kane combined make the most destructive force in history.

Why is it?

Everyone feels it necessary to anger Kane and I.

Brothers in Destruction was another dream come true. It was awesome to be

Undertaker's opponent. It was even better to be his teammate.

There

was

nobody, nobody that matched up with us, right?

So we just basically killed just about everybody that we got in the ring with.

We just murdered them.

The

audience

just bought it hook, line, and sinker -flankly. They thought, oh, this is

awesome. Undertaker and Kane are together.

Within the period of its run, I think it was...

Pretty damn good.

At least once a

week I get that question. Are you and Kane really brothers?

Oh, we're half brothers, yeah.

Brothers in spirit.

And sometimes I'll say, yeah, we're brothers.

I look at him as a brother, so I might as well.

Mark Calloway is one of my idols. He is a mentor to me.

There wouldn't be a Kane if there hadn't been an Undertaker in the end. If it

hadn't been for him, my life would not be where it is today.

So I owe him a lot, both professionally and personally.

The natural evolution at that time for sports entertainment and professional

wrestling meshing.

You had this guy where, yes, you can still tell that mythological story about

Kane and Taker, but you had to evolve.

I think that's the natural progression of anything.

As an artist in WWE, part of what keeps you going is that creativity.

You're creating your character, evolving it.

And I also took it as a personal challenge because I wanted to prove to

that Kane is not just the guy, Glenn Jacobs is not just the guy whose

has to stand there and not say anything all the time.

He can do a lot more than that.

You know the stipulations. Take that mask off. What is this going to be like?

What is it going to look like? Oh, my God.

You know,

Kane, you're hiding something.

It's a lot more than that face behind the mask, too.

Triple H.

or he must unmask and reveal his identity.

Here it comes.

The top layup.

And Randy Orton take a cane.

Face first down.

A referee didn't see Orton's interference.

Kick out.

Oh, my God. The game wins it. You know the stipulations. Now take.

We had a big change in 2003 when we took the mask off. A lot of folks thought

that that was a huge mistake.

He should have stayed under the mask.

I thought when you do that unmasking thing, I get there has to be an

to the character, but for me personally, I was a little disappointed with it. I

just didn't see the need.

I prefer the Michael Myers type character. I don't know if it needed

evolution. I would have been happy with just that monster for 20 years.

Unmasking Kane was probably one of the top debates over the years that we've

had, is do you take this character and take away the mystique by unmasking him,

or do you take the next step with him, unmasking him and allowing him to be

human? It's something that you have to do at some point.

They wanted him to be able to express himself.

With a mask on, it's really hard to express yourself. It's hard to get

It's hard to get people to feel like someone's in peril without that facial

expression. The only people that were really for it were Vince McMahon and me,

but those were the only two people that needed me for it because it was the most

important people.

What's King going to do?

As they were shaving my head, Bruce Prichard walks in, and my head's about

halfway shaved, and Bruce said, hey, stop right there.

Let me get Vince. Vince came in. He's like, oh, you're exactly right. I think

it's great.

I remember him being terrifying.

He looked horrified. When you think about other movie monsters with masks,

that's kind of what you're thinking when you see them take their mask off.

What the hell is that?

Get a shot of that face!

My daughter and I, the youngest, were sitting on the bed.

We were watching the match, and she said, that's not bad.

I said, oh, hell yeah, it is.

That's him.

She was not happy with my judgment on that decision because she really liked

hair.

At the time, I had long, flowing hair, very thick that went halfway down my

back.

It was awful. It was friggin' awful.

And so he calls.

What do you think?

It's great, isn't it?

And I'm like, where in the hell is your hair?

He said, it's in a bag.

And that's exactly what he told me, it's in a bag. And I'm like,

well, get it back.

He thought, I can't. And I'm like,

uh -huh, we're going to talk about this when you get home or something like

that. I mean, I wasn't impressed at all, but he thought it was great.

Ah! Oh.

I imagine it was probably scary for him being under that mask as a comfort zone

for you for a long time, and now you're doing something completely different.

Oh, my God, there he is. He knew this was just another dimension for this

character to go.

I'm thinking this is the person that's going to be home with me and going to

events with the kids with this.

Shaved head. And it just got worse from there because it went from half shaved

head to full shaved head to no eyebrows.

Yeah. That really not only breathed new life into Kane, it almost gave me a

second career.

His character had so many levels and his range was just amazing.

He ends up cutting all these incredible.

You want to know why I became a monster?

Why don't you come down here and find out?

I think you need to feel my pain.

Where they needed him to go, he was able to

go and make it work exceptionally well.

On paper, that Kane character seemed exciting, but with a limited

shelf life.

Because he was covered from head to toe. You saw nothing except his eyes.

You ain't down with the big red machine.

And yet we're talking about him 25

years after he made his debut because he was able to inject humanity

into an inhumane character.

He made you care about him with just the slightest tilt of his head.

One of the things I gleaned from Glenn very early on was his adaptability.

That's what you really want out of a good character. You want a character

can do comedy.

The question is, brothers, whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when Hulk Hogan and The Rock and the Big Red Machine run wild

for you?

It can do wild storylines. It's also a badass or a movie monster that has some

emotional range.

Who's speaking to you right now?

Some demon from the depths of hell. Or a man in a suit.

Your friend, Tank.

The fact that he's been able to do that over the course of his career speaks

volumes to him as a performer.

If you needed something, you could go to Kane. Like, you needed a monster. You

needed a great match. You needed somebody agile. You needed somebody to

something entertaining and funny.

Okay, Kane, thank you for coming.

Remember, sharing is caring.

I buried my brother alive, twice.

I set a couple of people on fire and abducted various co -workers.

And I once electrocuted a man's testicles.

Years ago, I had a girlfriend named Katie, but, uh...

Let's just say that that didn't turn out so well. And for reasons never quite

explained, I have an unhealthy obsession with torturing Pete Rose.

Okay. The monster and the beauty, I think people also can relate to because

everybody needs love.

And for the monster to fall in love and for the monster to actually show

emotion.

And to show emotion through a mask is very difficult to do.

Hello?

Is this Halle Berry?

Uh, yes.

Why don't you ever return my fan mail? I feel like we've made a connection.

I mean, I even included a picture. You wrote that your home address is the

depths of hell.

What do you expect me to do with that?

Does this mean we're not going on that picnic?

I've been very fortunate to have worked with all the people I've worked with,

everybody from Undertaker to Daniel Bryan.

And they've been instrumental in allowing me to do that, that process of

continually reinventing yourself.

Because frankly, our audience is just like any other audience.

It's really cool when you're there for a while, you get stale and they want to

see something new.

What can I say?

Chicks, dig the mask.

I've been blessed to have a fantastic WWE career.

But the greatest blessing I've had is my family.

Without them, I never would have been able to do what I did in WWE.

Crystal's plan for our life was that when I retired from WWE, we

would, I guess, just... kind of enjoy each other and live life.

Then I get this wild idea.

I want to get into politics, which was not something that she had ever planned

on.

I'm in a unique situation because of who I am and because of the wrestling thing

and now because I'm mayor.

trying to show the rest of the world and even people here within our community

what a great place this is, the assets that we have, the things that there are

to see, and things that we need to work on.

We're at Schultz Brown, Knox County, and we're kicking off Oktoberfest. I just

got to tap the kegs.

at the same time that the mayor of Munich, Germany, kicks off October 5th

This is the leader hose in the traditional Bavarian outfit.

These are extremely uncomfortable, actually. It's all leather, so you can't

really move that well in them.

It's awesome that you come and do this.

It's fun, man.

There's a big learning curve.

It was almost like being back in my first match in professional wrestling.

Oh, my gosh.

Here I am.

What am I going to do?

Hey, Jet. What's going on, buddy?

It's a good shirt, dude. I like that.

Because now it wasn't just about me and WWE.

It was also now about 500 ,000 people in Knox County.

Jet is his biggest fan.

Hey, good morning. Now I'm not president.

Mayor Jacobs, can you give him a big one -up?

This is something people look forward to every year. Dogwood Arts Festival and

the official opening of the Dogwood Trails.

I don't think any of us thought, there's the future mayor of Knox County with a

Hall of Fame career.

Thank you very much.

One day I woke up and had this idea. The current county mayor wouldn't be

running again.

Good to see you, bud. Nice to see you. Open seats don't come up that often.

And I thought to myself, huh, that might be something that I would be good at,

would like to do.

Maybe I'll do that and bounce the idea off a couple of friends.

Are you bleeping crazy?

I think probably was my first things out of my mouth.

And then really, that's pretty damn cool, man.

No, we really didn't know that he was going to do that. And I thought, oh, my

goodness. And then he told us what he had in mind to do, which was to

young people to go to school, get an education, be ready to go to work. And I

say, this is wonderful.

How are you, sir?

You guys getting some hot chicken? One of the first things I did after I made

the decision to run for mayor was fly off to Stanford and talk to Vince.

As soon as I said this is what I want to do, he got a big old grin and told me

that's what I should do.

And that meant a lot to me, having his support, because, you know, he could

said, well, that's stupid. Why would I do that?

And that would have pretty much shot down any ambition that I had. So the

that he was supportive of it really meant a lot to me.

Just a big win for a big man. You probably know Glenn Jacobs is 6 '8",

he's certainly feeling like he's towering tonight.

Glenn's a very smart guy, and Glenn is a guy that has no detractors.

There are people that may disagree with his politics.

Nobody disagrees with Glenn Jacobs as a man because they love him.

I think that my career in WWE made it a lot easier for me to transition into

politics because I'm already used to being in the public eye, and I developed

thick skin.

In my case here, I just try to do the best that I can, and I try to do what I

think is right, no matter what.

When I first got into professional wrestling, I had no idea where it was

to end up.

I didn't have any other plans for my life. I thought wherever it would take

was wherever it would take me.

There were a lot of moments where I didn't necessarily know if it was worth

I didn't know where I was going to end up. I didn't know what was going to

happen. But that was not enough to ever make me quit.

I never had the moment where I just threw my hands up and said it wasn't

it.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the Kane -Undertaker story is probably the

greatest story.

WWE's ever told.

It spanned 25 years.

There's so many different layers to it, levels to it. That was your week.

I can't emphasize enough. Glenn making this work was impossible.

Yes, it was funny. There's no wrestler alive that could have done this except

for Glenn Jacobs.

He's that good.

I'm the tag team champion.

I'm the tag team champion. I'm the tag team champion. He could work with

anybody. He was really gifted on the mic.

He's a freak, just like me. He is a bona fide top 20 guy in all of wrestling.

Hey, I'm starving.

No, animals are our friends. He was a guy that was loved and appreciated by

his peers.

They say good things happen to people that deserve it. You don't find guys

him every day.

Pro wrestling can be anything you want it to be.

Taking people on a white knuckle ride.

And then you can make them laugh the

next week.

So it's a balancing act.

And Kane did it as well as anybody.

He paid heavy dues and he persevered and he rolled with the punches

and got himself into a position where he could be one of the biggest stars in

WWE history.

This says a lot about him. Thank you for making Kane one of the most memorable

characters ever. And Kane would like to leave you with this.

The story has lasted all these years. The man behind that character has so

character that he's been able to endure. He's been able to adapt for the

audience to be on this journey with Kane through all of these different

identities helps the lasting impression that Kane will have on everyone that's

ever invested in that character.