WWE legend Mark "The Undertaker" Calaway has discussed one major change that happened to the WWE ring after Vince McMahon started wrestling.
"The Phenom" knows a thing or two about the physical toll of wrestling ashehadnumerous surgeries during his long and storied career. In a recent edition of his "Six Feet Under" podcast, Calaway was asked by former US President and WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump about the firmness of the WWE ring and how it caused wear and tear on a wrestler's body. He alleged that once former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon began to wrestle, the rings became softer.
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"It's funny, when Vince started getting in the ring and mixing it up a little bit, the rings got a little bit softer [laughs]. Before that, it would be like taking a fall on this floor. They were really hard. It's a crazy thing and you just condition your body to it, where you don't even after you do it so much, you just don't think about it."
He emphasized how the human body is not prepared or designed for the numerous, brutal bumps that wrestlers take on a weekly basis.
"The body is not made to take that [level of abuse]. Most people don't realize the schedule we kept back then too, which was on the road, over 200 days a year, and that's in the ring," said Undertaker.
McMahon, who was behind the scenes or on commentary for a large part of his ownership of WWE, turned himself into an evil character, Mr. McMahon, and began to wrestle. McMahon has stated in the past that he was keen to be an in-ring performer, but his father, Vince McMahon Sr., forbade him from becoming an active performer. But, that changed during the Attitude Era, as McMahon wrestled numerous legends, which included the likes of "Stone Cold"Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, and Ric Flair, to name a few.
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