ED YOUNG: Talk to me about the travel though because most people have no idea how much you travel. Just kind of give me an average, time, where you’re wrestling around North America and then let’s say you go to Japan, just kind of generally.
UNDERTAKER: So when I was going full time I had a stretch, I’m gonna say probably eight years, where averaged over 270 dates a year gone on the road. I’d be out sometimes 30-40 days and that’s working every night.
ED YOUNG: So you’re saying you wrestled 270 times?
UNDERTAKER: Well, more than that. Because I’m part of the year back in the early 90s there’s part of the year we would work twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday. I’d be in Rochester, New York that noon, you’d wrestle, change your clothes, get in your rental car and then drive to Syracuse, you know…
Then fortunately I got to a point where I could say, “I can’t.” I took a page out of Andre’s book. I said I can’t do these double shots. I mean, you’re sore, you’re cold and wet. But that was just the norm for a long time. That’s just how it was done.
Sometimes in the middle of the tour here in North America, the company flies you to say Chicago. Then you got a rental car or…basically your travel is up to you from the time that you land.
I learnt really late, I started leasing a rental bus which I had wish I’d done a lot sooner. I mean, it’s a big expense, but I think it would have prolonged my ability to work a fuller schedule just because…most people don’t realize that day after day after day… you get out of an arena at 12:30 at night sometimes and you gotta put in 200-300 miles to go to the next town.
So by the time you (get there), it’s like 3 O’Clock in the morning and you’re pulling up to a hotel and especially there in the end when I was working all the time, you’d sit there, open the door and you’re actually thinking…let me get this leg out first…you know…your body kind of just…there’s no where to stop, everything’s closed.
You’ve pretty much sat in this position (driver position) for 4 hours and then you have to get up and check-in to your hotel, go to sleep. Now if you have to get up in the morning to work out or do whatever you have to do, you gotta make time for that, you gotta make time to eat, you gotta get to the arena at a certain time.
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