A lot of things have changed in wrestling since The Undertaker made his debut in 1987. The path to success in the business wasn’t defined as well and aspiring wrestlers had to do a lot of unexpected things to get the experience they needed back then. For the Last Outlaw, this meant wrestling in places such as a federal prison just to get good at his craft.
The Dead Man reviewed this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw in a new video on his Patreon page and answered some questions.
During the talk, Taker was asked if he ever wrestled in prison. The wrestling veteran recalled one of his early trainers booking him for one such show:
“Oh, yeah. It was a federal prison. Kind of like a pre-release prison. It was pretty interesting. You know, back then, anytime anybody had a ring going up somewhere and you can get on a card, you got on it. That was just how it was because there was nothing more valuable than ring experience. So I remember the guy that invited me to go. He actually trained me a little bit too. His name was Rick Davidson. Him and his brother were a tag team in the 70s.”
The Russian Grave Digger: The Undertaker
The Undertaker revealed that ironically, he was working the gimmick of a Russian grave digger at the time and detailed the environment they had to deal with for these events:
“I want to say my name was Boris Dragu – the Russian grave digger. How about that for irony? And you haven’t been heckled till you’ve been to a prison show. They don’t give any kind of dams about what they say or what they do. It was always that long walk in through the prison to get to where we had the wrestling event…But that’s funny. I haven’t thought about that in years, but yeah, I’ve worked there. I worked there several times.”
Rick & John Davidson were two brothers who were born in Texas in the early 50s. They wrestled for promotions such as NWA Hollywood and MSW Mid-South Wrestling.