The Undertaker appeared on The Norm and D Invasion on Sportsradio 96.7 The Ticket on Wednesday morning 11/10, revealing he is due for a knee replacement while discussing his career and the on-sale for WWE’s Wrestlemania.  Some highlights from the conversation:

How he feels physically these days:

“Both my hips are partial hip replacements already.  I need, I need a right knee, so I have surgeries lined up. I just…I gotta wait until hunting season is over for [them.]”

Whether he misses performing in the ring:

“I miss performing in front of our live audiences, especially around WrestleMania time.   It’s just, you know, it’s the game.  I was very blessed to have a very long career where I was active for so many years, but the body can only take so much and deliver so much, and for me that time.  I realized at the last WrestleMania that I had, that I did [Wrestlemania 36] that my time had come.”

Whether being involved in real estate in the Austin area is boring compared to WWE:

“Pretty much everything I do now, you know, other than I get on some pretty good hunts here and there…yeah, there’s not a lot that compares to the adrenaline rush of walking out in front of 101,000 people at AT&T stadium.  That’s kind of hard to duplicate.”

Who is he these days – Mark Calaway or The Undertaker:

“You know, what I’m somewhere caught in the middle and then that would, that would be the American Badass I think.   There was that run there in the early 2000s where I kind of moved away from the traditional Undertaker and I turned into the biker gimmick, which is not just another extension of my real personality. I’m gonna call it there in the middle between all three of those really. You’re not going to see, unless it’s a very special kind of event…I’m going to kind of let that character rest and, and let the the legacy of it live in people’s memories.  Mark Calaway will always be the Undertaker.   It’s just, now that you’re going to get a little bit more insight on the Undertaker from Mark Calaway, if that makes sense.”

Wrestling in the legendary Sportatorium in Dallas:

“Walking down that ramp at the Sportatorium, never did I envision walking in front of, 80-90-a hundred thousand people just screaming at the top of their lungs.   There’s nothing that I could ever imagine.  When I wrestled at AT&T Stadium for WrestleMania 32.. you kind of become a little bit desensitized to it. You never take it for granted, but even that night, because that’s the night that we set our attendance record of 100,000 people…I did take just a moment, just a quick moment and there was that whole reflection of where I started and where I was at at that moment and it was incredible.  As y’all all well know when AT&T Stadium is full. I mean, it is just massive and just an ocean of people. And, the energy was incredible. So amazing.”

“The biggest memory that comes back is, is that’s where I had my first real professional match and I had it against, he’s now deceased, Bruiser Brody, and I just remember being physically just dominated in my first match by, you know, this guy, who’s a maniac.  I learned so much.  I learned so much so quick about the industry and it was a humble beginning, but it put me on the road to, where we eventually ended up.”

The Creation of The Undertaker character:

“There’s a story and I’ve told it a few times.  I was in talks with the WWE at the time, and I thought that I was coming out of this giant egg and I was going to be Egg Man and you know, I was going to have to shave my head and my eyebrows and my face.  So when I heard, when I heard Undertaker, like, I didn’t even know what I had no clue what it was, what it meant or anything else. I just knew it wasn’t Egg Man.  It was an upgrade and so I was very open and then the next day when I flew up to Stanford and Vince McMahon showed me the storyboards of the character and its origins, I fell in love with it.   Fortunately, you know, he kind of put it in my lap and help me and let me develop the character.   The rest is history, but I fell in love with it right away.”

Would he have had the same success as Egg Man?

“Nah, The egg man may have had maybe a 10 or 15 year run. [Laughs] No, I think that egg would have cracked.  I think that egg with a crack probably four or five months, then I would have been future endeavored for sure.”

Learning he was defeating Hulk Hogan for the WWF Title at Survivor Series 1991:

“Overwhelming.  Hulk Hogan being the golden goose, you know, everything at that point is, is built around Hogan. I’ve been in the company just under a year at that point. [Vince McMahon] comes to you and says, ‘OK, you’re going to be the World champion” and it was really overwhelming; Probably the most nerve wracking few weeks of my life.  That’s obviously that’s a commitment from Vince.  He believes in what I’m doing and where this character is going.   The amount of pressure that I put on myself, like I have to deliver on this thing.   It was an incredible compliment from Vince that he, he was that comfortable with me and it was…I don’t even know how to really describe it because I was not mentally expecting it.  Yeah, that just came out of the clear blue and I was like, “Okay. I like…I like where this is going.”

The Curtain Being Pulled Back on Professional Wrestling:

“I’m an old school guy, man, and I always liked just the little bit of veil of mystery, so I was really reluctant.  Vince has incredible vision and knows and sees these things that just regular people don’t see sometimes.  I was a traditional, an old school guy, so I just wanted to kind of keep things the same.  It was another one of those cases where I was, you know, I was wrong.  The business has grown exponentially and continues to grow. So I have to grow with it, but my old school roots are always there and always kind of wished things [remained the same]. I like the fact that we’re growing as a company, but I wish we could kind of step, take a step back sometimes and get back to that Attitude Era feel of things at least to not know where, you know, where the product goes and and where the company goes.   So yeah, I was, I was not on board with the sports entertainment aspect of it.”

The Mick Foley Hell In A Cell match:

“So, you know, as far as being in character, like, and people kind of think I’m squirrely sometimes when I talk about it, but when I make that walk to the ring, like Mark Calaway is usually long gone.   I’m as close to being that character, especially at that part of my career, as I can possibly be, but I ended up, but I also tell people that’s the only, the one and only time that I felt like I had, kind of an out of body experience, watching.  Once I threw him off of the cage onto the table, it was like, I could see him flying through the air, which seemed like it took 20 seconds and not like two.   I could see myself.  Hey, well, it, it really was, it, it was nerve wracking and waiting on him to, to move.  Once I saw him moving around, I felt a little better.  Unfortunately the one on the table was the easy one that night. It was that one where he went through the, the Cell. That was what I didn’t think he was going to get up