In a recent interview with SportBible, the Big Show spoke at length about his working relationship with the Undertaker, who Show has nothing but praise for:
Undertaker is one of the greatest and smartest guys in the history of the business. He understands his character so well and he’s an expert in psychology. I was lucky enough to come in at a time and have him as my mentor when there wasn’t a lot of mentors around. It was extremely competitive and no one gave a crap if you succeeded or not. As long as you could put asses in seats, that’s all anyone cared about.
Big Show goes on to explain that when he came to WWF from WCW, he was still really green, because in WCW he’d just done what he was told, and he no longer had that degree of supervision. Fortunately, the Undertaker was around to help, in his own uniquely “wrestling” way.
During that time period, Taker took me under his wing and man, it was old school. He would chew my ass out every night for something. I remember every night driving in my car thinking, ‘Well I’m a fat piece of trash’.
Much later, Big Show tried to express his gratitude to Taker, but the Dead Man had a unique response to Show’s sentimental words:
We had a great match many years later, one of my favorite matches I’ve ever had. I sent him a text a bit later and said, ‘Hey man, thanks for such a great match, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, you’re the man’.
He sends me a text back and it’s a picture of his balls and he’s flipping me the bird. I didn’t know how to reply to that.
I didn’t see him for about a month afterwards and when I did, he just went red and started laughing. I said, ‘Yeah thanks for that’ and he asked, ‘Well, did you get the message?’ Yeah, loud and clear.
Not everyone would have been comfortable getting a text like that (even/especially from the Undertaker) but Big Show clearly took it in stride.
