The Undertaker recently opened up about the violent chair shots he delivered to his opponents during his WWE career. With the increased awareness of head injuries in 2024, these brutal moments, particularly his steel chair attacks on Maven and Mr. Kennedy, are viewed with more scrutiny.
There have been rumors and speculations that some of these chair shots were delivered with malicious intent, possibly as hazing or on-air punishment, and accusations even included claims of homophobia. However, The Undertaker firmly denied any malice behind his actions.
During his Six Feet Under podcast, where Maven was a guest, the infamous Royal Rumble 2002 chair shot came up. The Undertaker explained that his chair shots were a product of how he was trained and that he would expect to be hit just as hard in return.
“In my defense, go back and look at the whole scope of how I swing a chair. I hit everybody the same. There was no malice. There was no, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to try and hurt the greenhorn.’ If you look at all my chair shots when we could hit. Now granted, at the time, we did not know about CTE. And I came up in a generation where that’s how you swung a chair,” The Undertaker explained.
He also addressed the specific accusation of targeting Chris Kanyon because of his sexuality: “I’ve been accused of smashing Kanyon with a chair because he was gay. I didn’t even know he was gay; I didn’t even know until like, years later.… I could care less… but there’s people out there that have created that rumor, ‘Undertaker smashed him.’ Undertaker swung the chair the way Undertaker swung a chair. I didn’t expect anything.”
The Undertaker emphasized that the intense chair shots were just part of the business as he knew it: “If I swung a chair at somebody, the way I swung it, I’d expect the same one back. Watch me and Triple H. He beat the crap out of me. That’s just the way I learned how to swing a chair.
(Bruiser) Brody hit me with a chair in my first match that I thought broke my spine. That’s just the way I came up. Knowing now what we do about head injuries, it’s a different deal. I would say, ‘Okay, make sure that you get your hands up.’”
Maven, during the podcast, clarified that The Undertaker never instructed him to keep his hands down for the chair shot and praised The Undertaker for taking great care of him during their matches.
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