The Undertaker reveals what Brock Lesnar did when he was in HOSPITAL after his WrestleMania streak was broken and admits he's 'anxious' about The Beast facing Omos... while he confesses 'the problem' with Brothers of Destruction tag team with Kane

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The Undertaker is one of WWE's most iconic characters, with the man behind the persona, Mark Calaway, enjoying a career spanning over 30 years in the professional wrestling industry.

From his WrestleMania streak to intense rivalries with the likes of Shawn Michaels and CM Punk, there's scarcely been a career more worthy of a Hall of Fame spot, which Calaway received in 2022.

Nowadays, after retiring in 200, he's touring the world presenting his '1 deadMAN SHOW' in a bid to share stories with fans around the globe.

He also pops into the WWE performance centre from time to time and has given advice to stars ranging from Brock Lesnar to Omos with seemingly every performer keen to listen to what he has to say.

Calaway spoke exclusively to Sportsmail's Alex McCarthy to discuss some of those topics. 

The Undertaker enjoyed a career in wrestling that lasted for over 30 years 

Vince is out, kind of, and Triple H is in that creative hot-seat, but that doesn’t change much for you, right? Is there a deal still there?

'I have an open-door policy, whenever I want to show up either at the performance centre or in main roster WWE. I have an open invitation to come and share my experiences and philosophies with the talent and try and help some of them develop their characters and its strange because I love to do that, I really do, but it’s really difficult to travel to go and do that at this point after all these years, to do that and get there and I’m still getting to grips with not being a performer in that aspect. 

'I don’t know, that could be a little bit selfish of me, but when I am there, I’m always an open book and I openly look for people to come and talk to me. I can’t talk to everybody, but they know that I’m there and if they want to ask me questions on things I’m there and more than willing to share that information with them. 

'Some people do it just to say "Hey, I was talking to Taker!", but some actually want to know and pick my brain. That’s probably something that will come a little bit later but the travel aspect of it for me right now is difficult and for whatever reason at this point of my career I think I’m more recognisable than ever, so getting from point A to point B is quite the adventure, to get through an airport and try and be respectful and not a snob, which I’m not, but a lot of the time people just don’t understand.

'I had to do an appearance the other day and man my travel was cray, I got flights delayed, I was awake for over 30 hours. It’s hard to be nice sometimes when you’ve been awake for 30 hours and you’re catching a 5am flight to go back home and do another appearance. 

'I know you get the violin playing, I’m not looking for anyone to feel sorry for me, but it's just tough to get out sometimes and go to the performance centre. In the summertime my kids are out of school so it’s easier but I do spend a lot of time in Florida so I usually do a lot more in the summer.'

Mark Calaway, the man behind The Undertaker, still travels to help the WWE and put on his '1 deadMAN SHOW'

You were talking about people you may have given wisdom to. I believe you may have spoken to Omos before, what do you think about that, him getting in there with Brock Lesnar?

'I’m anxious to see what happens there. I’m really high on Omos, he has a way to go and it's difficult cause it’s so hard to book him. There’s nobody that matches Brock, but it’s so hard to match anybody up against him and it’s not like it was for Andre (The Giant) back in the day.

'Andre before WWE, he went from territory from territory and travelled and he was just a global ambassador so people didn’t see him week after week on the same show. With Omos, that’s something they’re going to have to figure out because he’s a very special talent. He’s still developing that talent and my gosh what a great human being he is - actually I'm killing him off cause he’s a bad guy right! But he is a really nice human being and he is a sponge and he wants to get better and he wants to do all of these things that I look for when I see somebody that I really want to mentor.

'But it’s difficult because its just so hard to book him in a way that he should be booked. He is an attraction, he’s not an every week tv kind of guy, he needs to be special and I think he needs to be protected in that way.

'It’s a really interesting dynamic, you have this guy who is massive and dwarfed Brock. Nobody dwarfs Brock. So it should be interesting, I’m curious to see how it all works out, but Omos is a great human being.'

Brock Lesnar ended The Undertaker's defeated streak at 21 vicrtories at WrestleMania 30

Lesnar will go one-on-one with Oos (right) at WrestleMania later this year

Calaway has formed a positive relationship with Omos as he tries to guide the star

The backstage video clips of yourself and Brock are so fascinating. We all know the original UFC clip… After the streak was broken, for you and Brock, did that bring you closer? What was the working relationship like sharing big moments like that?

'Brock and I have always been close. When he came up the first time, there were numerous occasion where we sat down and talked about things, he ran by me early on when he was thinking about leaving. When he wanted to go and play football or do something else, and I gave him my perspective on it. 

'Where everyone else was telling him he was making a mistake I told him the opposite, I told him, "Dude if you don’t do it now, you’re going to look back one day and have that regret, this is going to be here."

'Brock’s a special talent, everybody knows the talent brock has. WWE is always going to be there for him, then he goes out and tries football and ends up in MMA and he did pretty good, world champion, biggest pay-per-view draw at the time that they had, and then his career when he came back was picked up right where he left off. 

'I think the world of Brock, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for his business acremen and his knowledge of the business. I didn’t know this because I was concussed, I didn’t know my name, but my wife told me - when the ambulance got to the hospital in new Orleans (After WrestleMania 30), they took me to the hospital right after because I was severely concussed, right?

'Behind the ambulance was Vince (McMahon) and Brock. Vince left WrestleMania to go to the hospital and Brock was either with Vince or in the next car, so that tells you about the human being right there. Then in the next year, someone told me about this clip right before I went out the next year against Bray (Wyatt), Brock was kind of there and I'll be the first to admit that my confidence was shattered.

'I couldn’t pick out when the concussion happened, I didn’t know how it happened, there wasn’t anything reckless done, my confidence was shattered and that’s hard for anyone to believe. You had this amazing career and something like that happens late in your career, I had to self-doubt and he was right there and let me know, "Hey you’re still the man, go out there and get you some."'

Lesnar accompanied Calaway to the hospital after he suffered a severe concussion at WrestleMania 30

AJ Styles, I was so happy to see you two work together, he told me openly that he tried to get you again in front of fans. Has anybody else tried to lure one out of you since you’ve been in retirement? Drew McIntyre tells me he tried really hard.

'AJ wanted to run it back and we, because of Covid, had to come up with the boneyard match, but originally that was going to be a regular stadium match. 

'I was pretty much done, I was pretty much decided that I thought there was nobody left I thought I could have that match with and then AJ got on the phone and was like, "Man it sounds like you might have one more in you!" and I was like, "Man", cause he was somebody who I always wanted to work with.

"He is, no pun intended, phenomenal. He can work with anybody and some of my best matches have been with somebody where there is a size discrepancy, a huge difference in the guys like Kurt Angle and Eddie Guerrero and Shawn Michaels, I had my best matches with those guys because I love telling those stories, the big guy and how the little guy has to chop the big guy down.

'I love storytelling, that’s what I did best and I always did it best with guys like that. AJ gets it, he understands and I couldn’t pass that opportunity up, and yes so we did the boneyard, it was about midway through that night I was filming that that I realised I was done, but to his credit he tried really hard to get me to run it back and I thought about it, but I didn't think I could have done him justice or the match justice. The tank was on E and I got everything out of that sponge that I could possibly get - that sponge being my body.

'Yes, Drew McIntyre has hit me up many times, Sheamus has hit me up many times, there are a lot of guys. I think they want that W is what they want, they know that’s where that would be and believe me if I thought I could live up to the expectations at this point I would do it, but we're off to different things, were off to the 1 deadMAN SHOW now.'

Around the turn of the millennium, the invasion angle, I thought Undertaker and Kane, Brothers of Destruction, it was so great that you finally united and were this great force. You had the stalker angle, then you had the tag thing at the top of your game. It's meant to be this enormous storyline, and it felt like Undertaker at his apex could’ve been utilised a little bit better.

'It's one of those situations where again it’s so difficult to book those two guys. You have two mythical superpowers, now they’ve combined forces, and you’re talking about a guy that makes fire, and another guy that throws lightening, two super predators, it become really difficult to book that. 

The Undertaker's on-screen brother, Kane, is also a Hall of Famer and spent much of his career alongside Calaway in one way or another

'It’s kind of like the road warriors magnified when you have those characters that were so strong on their own and then you put them together, who beats that team really? It was this like, we’re going to book ourselves into a corner and as good as it was and as fun as it was for everyone to finally see the brothers together, they got a taste of it - to be honest I would have liked to have taken it a little further - but Kane was so valuable as a single and I think we had more to give to the product as singles than we did as a tag team. 

'I think we elevated the tag teams for the time we were together but we served more of a purpose as individuals. But it was really fun together, one of my favourites is a match that we did, I’m trying to think of the two guys names, I’m horrible, but I did the powerbomb and Kane was going to do a powerbomb and he threw his guy over his head. 

'He’d never done a last ride and he ends up taking his guy and throws him over his head, it was a complete botch but it was so funny because it was the big brother telling the little brother. It was so bad because these guys had to take two or three powerbombs because I was having to show Kane how to do the last ride, but it was so much fun and I think it would have been fun to take it a little further but again there was just nobody that matched up with us and it was just going to be a slaughter fest.'

Undertaker's 1deadMAN SHOW comes to Las Vegas on Friday 24th March and Los Angeles on Friday 31st March. Tickets available now. WrestleMania 39 airs live on Peacock in the US and WWE Network everywhere else on April 1 and April 2.