Bruce Prichard Reveals Details on Undertaker’s Original Name – As many of you may know, WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker was originally planned to debut under a different name, Kane “The Undertaker”. While the name never made it to air in its final form on TV, the idea was very real during the early stages of Mark Calaway’s WWE run, as Bruce Prichard recently explained.
Speaking on the Six Feet Under podcast, Prichard detailed how close WWE came to moving forward with the Kane name. According to Prichard, the concept came together while WWE was finalizing the character’s visual presentation.
“They sent over the drawings of different looks for you to be this dark character, and the coolest one was what we ended up with. He (Pat Patterson) goes, ‘He looks like an old fashioned Undertaker.’”
While the Undertaker name made sense visually, Prichard revealed that he was strongly advocating for the name Kane, drawing inspiration from biblical history.
“And I was like yeah that’s great, but I wanted to call you Kane, because Kane (Cain) was the first man to commit murder. Kane killed his brother Abel. In many ways Kane was the most evil person in biblical lore, kills his own brother, first man to ever commit murder. And I just loved that name, cool strong name Kane.”
For a brief period, WWE actually committed to the combined name. Prichard explained that Kane The Undertaker was used internally and on television tapings before the final decision was made.
“And so it was going to be Kane The Undertaker, that was the deal, you couldn’t get more evil than Kane. We were gonna go with that, we went three weeks with Kane, until we dropped it.”
He added further context by noting how close it came to sticking.
“We did three weeks and then we did TV, that’s why I remember its three weeks because we did that whole TV’s as Kane The Undertaker. The next TV, which was three weeks later, we dropped the Kane and you were just The Undertaker. And I was like, ‘That’ll never get over.’”
History proved otherwise, as The Undertaker became one of WWE’s most enduring and successful characters, while the Kane name would later find legendary status with an entirely different Superstar.
Bruce Prichard Reveals Details on Undertaker’s Original Name
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