WWE Hall of Famer, The Undertaker [Mark Calaway], has always been rather vocal about his love for basketball. At 2.08 meters tall, Calaway perhaps could have made a great living as an NBA player. Of course, life took him in the direction of the kayfabe cemetery, and he spent almost 4 decades in a wrestling ring, terrorising his opponents as The Deadman and the American B*****.
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But back in the day, when he was still a high school student, Calaway found a way to play with the Houston Cougars in the summer. He even came face-to-face with Houston Rockets legends Clyde Drexler and Hakeem ‘The Dream’ Olajuwon. Calaway has, in fact, gone on record to say that Hakeem used to leave him speechless with his insane athletic abilities.
Calaway claims that Hakeem was so great that he made everyone around him look good. “Hakeem made me look like I was Magic Johnson,” he had said on his podcast. Unfortunately, it would appear that he took those words far too seriously, at least for a time.
The WWE legend recently found himself on the Club 520 podcast and talked about those days and much more. “I was such a good basketball player, I spent 38 years wrestling,” he joked.
“But no, I was a baller. I would usually … on most games, I would have more points than minutes played because I was always in foul trouble. And I would take getting fouled personally,” he continued.
Calaway also joked that, courtesy of how he behaved on the court, he was perhaps destined to end up where he did. He even talks about chasing a guy down the court and realizing that he was perhaps in the wrong sport. “It was straight retaliation,” he replied to a question about whether he would chase the ball or the player.
He attributes this to playing in the era of Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer. They weren’t necessarily the influence he was looking for, though, considering his heroes were Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
“I got into trouble more times thinking that I was Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. I would try to create passes that there was no need of. I could simply just bounce past it, but I would try and go (imitates a tricky pass). And I could see peripherally, my sub coming off the bench,” he said.
Well, thankfully, Calaway had the good sense to change careers. And anyone who followed his career would tell you just how athletic he was for someone who was almost 7 ft tall. And he wrestled well into his 50s, delivering top-notch matches despite a recurring hip injury. So perhaps there is a parallel universe where he stuck with basketball and was a bad boy rotational player, likely for a short time.
