It’s the most exciting, intoxicating thing that there is. To put that down is really difficult. I don’t like saying this because it sounds shallow, but it’s almost everything that you are. So, it’s tough and a catch-22. If you go in there and don’t feel like you had the performance you want, ‘Oh man, I can’t leave it that way.’ If you go in there and you tear it up and it was great, ‘I can do that again. I still got it and can continue to do this. That wasn’t so bad. I got more.’
It’s tough. When the feeling is good, you want to do it again and you keep doing it. When it’s bad, you can’t leave it that way because you have to end on a good note. I hear people say, and I’ve heard Taker say, it’s chasing the dragon. You’re always going to chase the dragon.”
On Ric Flair wrestling elsewhere after his retirement and who will decide when Undertaker is done:
“Look, if we have to, we’ve said it to others. Somebody has to hold the reins and guide the horse or it’ll run itself into the ground. But it’s a tough thing. It’s hard to tell somebody, ‘No, you can’t do this.’ With all due respect to him, Vince tried to do it with Flair and gave him the greatest moment of all time because it was there. The greatest sendoff, the perfect match with Shawn, the perfect moments, all of that.
Nobody in sports has had a moment like that, I don’t believe, anywhere in time. Just perfect. And he still left the company and went and had matches for other places. Small, insignificant, way far beneath him. People say, ‘Oh, he needed the money.’ No he didn’t. That was all ego.
It’s tough. In some ways, we can say, you can’t do this for us. Look, I’ve had to have that conversation with talent to say, ‘Look, it’s over. Medically, we can no longer have you perform here.’ The second you say that, the question that is asked is, ‘You say I can’t do it here but, I mean, I can go somewhere else and do this, right?’ It’s always that, so it’s tough.
The truth is, he has to be the one that says, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ Even if we tell him he’s done, if we want to be realistic about it, he could go do it somewhere else, I suppose. It has to be him. It has to be done right in his mind.”
