The Undertaker says the Montreal Screwjob is the incident that saw him truly become the locker room leader in WWE.
Not much can be said that hasn't already been said about the 1997 Survivor Series where Bret Hart was double-crossed by Vince McMahon on his last day before leaving the company to head to WCW.
The Undertaker, Mark Calaway, is a man respected by Bret Hart, Vince McMahon, and Shawn Michaels, the man who actually defeated Bret Hart for the WWE Championship that night. Because of this, when all of the chaos went down after the events that occurred on the air that night on November 9th, 1997, Undertaker played a large role in keeping WWE Superstars at bay while the men that were involved in the situation handled their business.
Speaking to ESPN, Undertaker broke his silence on the events of that evening and shockingly, Undertaker reveals that he wasn't sure if he wanted to come to work the next night, but feels like the office could have avoided the situation entirely by putting him in the ring with Bret Hart that night.
“You should've put me in the match somehow with Bret. I'm sure Bret would have dropped it to me. I could have dropped it to Shawn later on. You know, right after that. There was a different way to do it. But, you know, Vince had to make sure and he had to cover his bases, I guess, in his mind,” Undertaker said. “That's kind of the point, I think, where the whole locker room leader really started to come about. The boys knew how upset I was that one of us got screwed over. But then the office kind of could see the point of, 'okay. He's trying to do what's best for business,' and it always was that way for me. It was like, you know, I'll defend you if you need to be defended, but it's all about business at the end of the day. That's where I fell in that, you know, I was one of the rare people that kind of fell into that groove where I was trusted, you know. Yes, I was one of the boys, but I was trusted by the office, just like I was sitting in on their meetings.”
Undertaker would later fight Shawn Michaels at the 1998 Royal Rumble in a Casket Match, a match that would actually lead to Shawn Michaels' back injury that would put him on the shelf for four years.
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