There won’t have been much in The Undertaker’s iconic career that’s made him think twice.
Over the course of a prolific three decades as an in-ring performer, Mark Calaway donned the black coat and hat as one of the finest WWE stars of all time.
Debuting in 1990 at the Survivor Series as a villainous mortician of sorts, the brooding Taker gradually won over fans and, by the summer of 1992, was a fully-fledged ‘good guy’ and fan favourite.
Over the many years that followed that popularity reached near cut levels as the Texan become one of the most established names in the company, an ever-present in the famed Attitude Era and beyond.
He brought the curtain down on his unrivalled career in 2020 having battled AJ Styles in a cinematic classic at that year’s WrestleMania, though he’s made the odd cameo since at events including WrestleMania XL and this year’s epic launch episode of Raw on Netflix.
It would be an understatement to say that, in between, the Deadman endured his share of physical punishment that comes with a grinding WWE schedule.
He arguably had it more severe than most. Given his mythical character as one that transcended the living being (it was the 1990s…), he was pitted against WWE’s biggest and physically imposing stars.
Over the years, he’s seen off the likes of Kamala, Yokozuna, The Giant Gonazlez, his own ‘brother’ Kane, and no-doubt countless others.
He elevated each one of them but seemingly did so without particularly injuring himself or others.
The veteran can’t look back and say he managed to come away unscathed from one feud, though – one that left him fearing for his sight.
In 1995, popular star Mabel was turned heel – made into a villain – and was paired against The Undertaker among others to establish himself as a deadly force.
Mabel and Taker met at the King of the Ring that year and at a string of non-televised events after that event – one such show ending with disastrous consequences for the master of the Tombstone.
At a seemingly innocuous part of the bout, 500-plus pound athlete Mabel, then King Mabel, inadvertently nailed The Undertaker in the face – the force of the blow later told the resultant injury had left him within one ‘hit’ away from losing an eye.
It cost the man himself over a month of his career as he took time away to recuperate. In a brutal description of the incident and the damage it very nearly caused, the legend explained in 2023: “He (Mabel) was grossly out of shape, his cardio was horrible [and] a lot of times, that’s how injuries occur.
“We’re in the match and I’m flying around. He’s supposed to be some place, and he wasn’t, so he tried to compensate, and instead of hitting me with this (bicep) part of his arm, he lunged… I’m coming off the ropes, full steam ahead and, basically, I run straight into a big punch.
“His hand hits me in my eye socket and I have an orbital blowout.”
Undertaker claims he got backstage and tried to put the incident’s damage down to a ‘shiner’ and little more, only to later get an almighty fright when discussing the matter in hospital days later.
Deviating to an emergency room almost by chance, he was given some stark news after a CAT scan.
He went on to say: “The doctor goes: ‘Well, you’ve lost about 50 percent of your orbital floor.’
“I go: ‘Excuse me?’ and he goes: ‘You need to go home and find an ophthalmologist and a surgeon.’
“I come to find out, I ended up losing 90 per cent of my orbital floor. My optic nerve is setting on a jagged piece of bone.”
Unsurprisingly, surgical intervention was needed. Undertaker added: “If I got hit on the right side of my head again, there is a good chance I would have lost my eye.”
Thankfully, surgery resolved the issue and, a month later, he was able to return to action – albeit with a drastically different look.
To protect his face and the surgical work that had been done, Undertaker was forced to wrestle in a face mask which, in true WWE style, was itself dramatised to look like something from the Phantom of the Opera.
Undertaker and Mabel rarely crossed paths again in WWE, with Hall of Famer Bret Hart sure that it was no coincidence.
The powerhouse was repackaged by WWE as Viscera during the Attitude Era and, according to a claim made by Hart in his autobiography, the returnee was paired alongside the Deadman at Undertaker’s own wish.
The Canadian stated Taker made request to avoid having to directly wrestle him, a claim the big man himself has since repeated in interviews. After another reincarnation – this time as Big Daddy V – the two did collide again across 2008 and 2009.
The man behind Mabel and his other subsequent characters, Nelson Frazier Jr, died of a heart attack in 2014.
