The Undertaker Underwent Emergency Heart Surgery After WrestleMania 41 – WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker revealed a serious and previously undisclosed health scare on the latest episode of his Six Feet Under podcast. The Phenom and his wife, fellow WWE star Michelle McCool, opened up about a life-threatening heart condition he battled in the weeks leading up to WrestleMania 41—an issue that ultimately led to emergency surgery the morning after the event.
McCool explained the emotional toll the situation took on her, saying many fans and peers assumed she was overwhelmed by WrestleMania weekend when in fact she was shaken by her husband’s health battle.
“I think it’s important for people to know some of the details. I felt that when people would come up to congratulate me and ask how I was doing, I was almost in tears. I would say I’m okay, but they could tell I wasn’t. They thought it was probably just because of the speech, but it was because of the heart issues you had been having weeks prior, which we found out by the grace of God. It ended up being terrifying. The day we got home from WrestleMania, the next morning at 6 a.m., we were at the hospital for heart surgery.”
She continued, “A sidebar for about five weeks. It was terrifying.” Taker chimed in, “I wasn’t supposed to go to Vegas.”
McCool stated, “You weren’t supposed to go anywhere. You didn’t want me to tell anybody. I really didn’t fair to me. Not fair to me. Not fair. We were in the hospital for four nights, two weeks before WrestleMania. Yeah, you weren’t supposed to go. That’s that old school mentality. I’m not mad at it, because I’d probably be the same patient, but it was terrifying. I couldn’t focus on anything else. All I wanted to focus on was you, your heart, getting you in with the best cardiologist, which we eventually did, but that took a lot of phone calls, several nights in the hospital, lots of doctor visits, and by the grace of God, yes, you were here, but out of the words of the doctor himself, it could have turned out badly, have we not found it that day.”
The Undertaker mentioned having to go in for tests to be done, which McCool pointed out that she had scheduled in January, and Taker went later in March.
“That’s what was crazy about it. You went to the doctor on March 28. I’ll never forget. You called me, saying they wouldn’t run the heart exam—just a routine heart scan we were going to do.
Taker chimed in, “I didn’t even know anything was wrong.”
McCool noted, “It was just a routine thing that took two and a half months to get into. When you called me, I’m not going to lie, and you said your heart rate was like 140-something, and they wouldn’t do the test, I got mad at first. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? We’ve been waiting two and a half months! Screw that, can you ask for a different nurse? Does she know what she’s doing?’
Then I thought, ‘Okay, Michelle, run it back.’ Anyway, I got you into another appointment about an hour later. They had one opening. Come to find out, you had been in chronic AFib for who knows how long. The scariest part was that you didn’t feel any symptoms, so we didn’t know. Yeah, you came in a few times out of breath, and I’d bust your balls, like, ‘Dude, you were just throwing the ball with the dog, why are you so out of breath?’ Or going up the stairs to pray with the kids, ‘Why are you out of breath?’ Not thinking it was an actual heart issue. Medicines didn’t work, and we ended up in the ER on a Friday. Of course, you wouldn’t stay the night because of Kai’s flag football all day Saturday. You looked at me and said, ‘I’m still in AFib,’ checking with your watch and everything. I told you, ‘Okay, if you’re not out of AFib when we’re getting ready to go to church tomorrow morning, we’re going to the hospital.’ Thankfully, you agreed. So we went to the hospital. Your numbers were out of whack, heartbeat was out of whack. Your ejection fraction, how the blood was pumping, was 30%. Yeah, it wasn’t much. That’s supposed to be 100, obviously. We ended up staying in the hospital for four nights where they had to cardiovert you and shock you back to a normal rhythm. Sadly, that only lasted 24 hours, maybe 48. After about four days, you go home. Two days later, you were back in AFib. I was stressed.”
She added, “Nothing was working. You kept telling me, ‘I’m fine, I feel fine.’ You wanted to fly to the first week of LFG to tape two days out of the hospital. I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ Could be wrong, but no one else did either. Nobody did. Your blood pressure was like 80 over 50, and your heart rate was 140 one second, 120 the next, 103 after that. It was just wild. That’s all I could focus on, literally. Even at WrestleMania weekend, the entire weekend, I was just worried about you. But you’re good now.”
Stay tuned to WrestlingAttitude, WA.Com On Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky and Google News for more.
The Undertaker Underwent Emergency Heart Surgery After WrestleMania 41
