WWE is in Las Vegas this week for its biggest show of the year, but even a celebrated WrestleMania mainstay like Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway had to start somewhere. In A&E’s new show LFG (That’s “Legends and Future Greats”), Calaway certainly makes for an intriguing coach. Not only is the legend trying to teach those competing for a pro wrestling contract some of his phenomenal skills, but it also seems that he’s been learning how to be a valuable mentor too.
For three decades, The Undertaker dominated WWE with his supernatural presence and a natural in-ring skill. Indeed, “The Deadman” was in a class by himself, but as one of the competing coaches on LFG (going up against Mickie James, Booker T, and Bubba Ray Dudley), ‘Taker is teaching his team all he can in order for one of his students to wrangle a full-time contract with WWE’s NXT developmental system.
While most of us know The Undertaker as being a man of few words, the chance to see Mark Calaway impart his wrestling wisdom has been a joy to see. And, at a specially organized panel at WWE World attended by M&F, the Hall of Famer shared how he’s come out of the shadows to be more hands-on as a coach.
“I was really shocked at how invested I became, so quickly,” said Calaway, in terms of how responsible he felt in order to make sure that all of the trainee wrestlers on the show were given a chance to succeed. “You’ll see on any given day, and you’ll see on background footage sometimes, you’ll see Bubba or Mickie talking to somebody, they’re not even on their teams, but it’s because they see things that help. My gosh, what I would have given, at that point in my process (of starting out as a wrestler), to have that kind of tutelage just at my fingertips. It’s amazing.”
The Undertaker Once Buried Wrestlers, Now He Lets Their Potential Rise
While Calaway has been all about supporting the up-and-coming stars on LFG, the WWE Hall of Famer has also been trying to figure out how intense he can be as relates to dishing out some of that Dead Man discipline and wrestling wisdom.
“Trying to find out how hard I could push,” he says. “I mean, we’re kind of the dinosaurs from a different era, and we came up (in the business) a lot harder. And we got a lot of ‘in your face’ (style teaching). So, it took me a minute to figure out how hard that I could push. I could say this, when the next season comes along, there won’t be a feeling out process and I know exactly how much they can take. You look at them: all these are DI athletes. They’ve all been coached hard (even before they got to LFG), and they can take it. So, that was, for me, trying to bring my era to them in a way that they understood.”
One of the standout trainees who has benefitted on Team Undertaker is Shiloh Hill, who is also known as college football star Thunder Justice Keck. In 2023, Keck signed the highest name, image, and likeness valuation of any Stanford athlete. His stock has risen ever since, and Keck, or Hill, as he is now known in WWE, was over the moon to have The Undertaker as a mentor.
“Man, getting to work in front of coaches and legends that I’ve watched since I’ve been really young, from the best to ever do it, it’s been truly an honor,” he said. No doubt: with such incredible coaching at their disposal, future stars like Shiloh Hill and the rest of those competing on LFG have a very real chance of one day performing at WrestleMania just like their mentors. New Episodes of A&E’s LFG return April 27 and stream the next day.
