What really gets under The Undertaker's skin? His estranged brother Kane? Nah. Brock Lesnar? Maybe. The real answer? You'd probably never guess it in 1,000 tries.
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00:00What really gets under the Undertaker's skin? His estranged brother Kane? Nah. Brock Lesnar?
00:07Maybe. The Real Answer? You'd probably never guess it in 1,000 tries.
00:11The man behind the Deadman, Mark Calloway, has opened up a lot since retiring in 2020.
00:16He once maintained the most airtight kayfabe in all of wrestling, but now, he's become so
00:22comfortable revealing his real life to fans that he has even let slip which fruit he simply can't
00:26stand. That's right, you might consider it a vegetable, but it's technically a fruit.
00:33Why do you hate cucumbers?
00:35That question came in a March 2024 Patreon-exclusive fan Q&A for The Undertaker's
00:40podcast 6 Feet Under with Mark Calloway. And the American badass provided the answer,
00:45though he seemed annoyed to even hear the word, saying,
00:48"'I don't even like talking about the cucumbers, man.'"
00:51Calloway explained that when he was just a — and we're quoting him here —
00:55"'wee little undertaker,' he returned home from school to find a massive bowl of cucumbers his
01:00mom had sliced up and soaked in vinegar. He proceeded to eat every last bite. That was a
01:04bad decision."
01:06"'If these walls could talk, right?'
01:08Calloway explained that it wasn't long before he threw up all those cucumbers,
01:12creating an aversion to them that continues to this very day. He said,
01:16"'From that moment on, the smell, for a long time even to see a cucumber,
01:20I would get somewhat — I wouldn't say nauseous, but queasy.'"
01:24Calloway said that his distaste for cucumbers remains so strong that he'll make sure to
01:28preemptively request that they be removed from any food that might even have a chance of containing
01:32them. He said,
01:34"'Let me get one and a bit of sushi or something like that if you want to see some drama.'"
01:38"'I'm not scared of them. I just don't like them.'"
01:41Unfortunately for Taker, some of his co-workers in WWE were aware of his cucumber hatred
01:47and took advantage of it. The Undertaker was known as the locker room leader throughout
01:51much of his career, but that didn't stop some of the most senior members of the roster from
01:55playing the occasional prank on him. One of those few was Taker's former manager, Paul Bearer.
02:01Calloway told Chris Van Vliet that Bearer would routinely put cucumber in his stuff,
02:05including his boots, to the point where Calloway jokingly called him an evil man.
02:10At a restaurant stop one time, Bearer even grabbed a slice of cucumber from the salad bar
02:14and put it in Taker's iced tea while he was away from the table.
02:18"'Paul had put a cucumber in the bottom of my glass, perfectly flat.'"
02:24Calloway was so annoyed by the prank that he got back at Bearer a few weeks later.
02:28On a car trip to Seattle, Bearer said he needed to go to the bathroom,
02:32but Taker just kept driving past every exit, eventually leaving Bearer with a pee stain on
02:36his jeans. The only other person confirmed to have played cucumber pranks on The Undertaker
02:41is his own daughter, Kaia. On an episode of the Wives of Wrestling podcast in 2022,
02:47Calloway's wife, Michelle McCool, said their home is typically a cucumber-free zone.
02:51But Kaia gets cucumbers for her birthday every year. She'll put them under her dad's pillow
02:56or in his car. When she has to go to the bathroom on a car trip, we'd have to think Calloway stops,
03:01even with the cucumber thing. Honestly, maybe hatred of greens is correlated with some type
03:06of future wrestling success. We haven't done deep research on the matter, but current WWE
03:11champion Cody Rhodes admitted to GQ back in 2021 that he despises vegetables, particularly broccoli.
03:18There doesn't seem to be any traumatic childhood story in his case, though.
03:22He simply said,
03:23"'I hate the taste of them.'"