Jim Ross Reveals Unique Setting He Wanted For The Undertaker & Mankind
Jim Ross has revealed details of scrapped plans for an Undertaker vs. Mankind encounter, which would have been far different from their Hell in a Cell collision.
Jim Ross wanted The Undertaker vs. Mankind to emanate from Alcatraz Island, a military fort-turned-federal prison.
This is the answer he gave in response to a fan question on the latest Grilling JR podcast, stating how he wanted the legendary rivals to collide on Alcatraz Island in 1996, two years before their critically-acclaimed King of the Ring 1998 encounter inside Hell in a Cell. Ultimately, logistical issues prevented the idea from becoming a reality:
“We kept looking for scenes. We kept looking for settings during that Undertaker-Mankind scenario. We knew the marriage worked. We knew those guys liked working together. So I was just trying to come up with a site that we could utilize that was different. You know, how many times can you give them the boiler room? How many times can you give them Hell in a Cell? You know, they liked that kind of stuff.
So I thought well, having a match in Alcatraz where the doors have opened at a certain time and they would be looking for each other and all that stuff, I thought had some intrigue. It would be sort of a unique setting to say the very least. There’s so much red tape, much to my chagrin that it just wasn’t gonna work out.”
Of the eleven televised singles bouts between the WWE Hall of Fame rivals, five of them came with a stipulation. In order, the pair contested a Boiler Room Brawl, a Buried Alive match, a No Holds Barred match, a Hell in a Cell match, and a No Disqualifications match. Without doubt, their Hell in a Cell encounter from the 1998 King of the Ring is their most famous.
The Undertaker and Mankind haven’t wrestled each other since Raw Is War’s 1 March 1999 transmission, a match that Mankind won via count out.