A look back at the tag match between Brothers of Destruction and D-Generation X.
Six years ago, WWE presented their Crown Jewel event from Saudi Arabia and headlining the show was a tag match between the Brothers of Destruction (The Undertaker & Kane) and D-Generation X (Shawn Michaels & Triple H). There were a number of mishaps throughout the match such as Paul Levesque tearing his pec and Michaels landing face-first off a moonsault.
The Undertaker looked back at that match on the latest episode of his Six Feet Under with Mark Calaway podcast. He recounted Michaels having to be convinced to do the match. He stated that there was no concrete plan going into it as far the layout.
They were confident going in, but said the match started bad and it continued on that route. Undertaker said everyone was ‘pissed’ afterwards and at the time, he was filming The Last Ride documentary. The camera crew wanted to interview him, but he told them not right now. Undertaker added that he can only imagine how he would have reacted if the match happened when he was 10 years younger and everything unfolded as it did.
Now, we’ve talked Shawn Michaels, who said he was not ever gonna wrestle again and had no intentions of and did not want to. We’re like, ‘Dude, you can do this in your sleep. Come on. It’s you and Triple H against — I mean, how many years of ring time? We could all do this in our sleep. This is gonna be easy money.’ We talked Shawn into it finally. Ain’t nobody sweating it. I don’t even think we started talking about anything until intermission of that. There wasn’t any thought. Like, anybody calling anybody, hey, what do you think about this? Or what do you think about that? We just rolled up into Saudi Arabia like, man, we’re about to tear the roof off. This is gonna be awesome. Oh my gosh. It just started out bad and just completely went off of the rails.
So, well one, we’re all pissed (after the match). Everybody’s pissed. Shawn is pissed because he came out of retirement. Paul’s pissed he tore his — because he had a WrestleMania match that year and he tears his pec. Glenn (Jacobs) loses his mask, I lose my pride… And I’m already filming Last Ride. It’s going to be part of the documentary and I remember them coming at me, because I had to go sit by myself for a minute to process what we had just done or didn’t do and they’re coming up to me to get my thoughts on it, right? And I’m just like, ‘No. Just leave me alone. I need a minute. Just leave me alone.’ I don’t think we ever got an interview. But yeah, it was awful. Everybody was apologizing for everybody else and it was just a complete disaster and trainwreck. It was just another example of how difficult it becomes without reps. When you’re not doing it every day — Shawn hadn’t did it for years. I wasn’t in the ring. Before the Australia match, it was a while since I had been in the ring. It happens I think in every sport. It doesn’t matter. You’re just gonna have one of those games and that’s what that was. It was four guys who you would think could have an awesome match in a broom closet in pitch black and it just didn’t turn out that way… 10 years prior (if that happened), they still would’ve been talking about that match. It would have been that good. But you don’t know. Even then, something could have happened. Father time is father time and it does creep on everybody but you never know. It’s just one of those things. Soon as one of your guys gets hurt and a mask and hair comes off… because a lot of times, the more you dig to try and fix it and make it better, it just gets worse and worse and worse… Not only did all that happen and we did the job so, it was just, like, insult to injury.
He (Kane) was more composed when things went wrong than I was initially. Like, out of the get-go. If I had-had that match 10 years earlier and all that had happened, oh my gosh. I don’t know. I would have showed my ass so bad. It would have been embarrassing probably. Glenn, obviously, his composure and you could tell, he was visibly pissed off at everything that had happened. But he ain’t gonna flip tables and do all that. If he did, then I’d be Hank Snow’ing on down the road brother. I don’t wanna be in the path of that tornado. Yeah, I’ll see you on the plane brother. You can get you some Apfelkorn and have some drinks or something brother. Apfelkorn, remember that.
Circling around to the topic of the Brothers of Destruction, Undertaker believes they should be in the WWE Hall of Fame. He said he’s not losing sleep over it and if it happens, it happens. He joked that if it does come to fruition, his speech will not be as long as it was for his solo induction.
Uh, yeah (I think Brothers of Destruction should be in WWE Hall of Fame). I mean… I think there’s people with less resumés that are in the Hall of Fame. But, we’re both in the Hall of Fame. So, it’s not something I’m losing much sleep about. I don’t really wanna give another speech. But to answer your question, yeah, I think the Brothers of Destruction belong in the Hall of Fame but again, I’m not gonna lose sleep. If it happens, my speech won’t be nearly as long as it was when I went in on my own.
Glenn ‘Kane’ Jacobs last wrestled as a part of the 2021 men’s Royal Rumble. Levesque is retired from in-ring competition and his last match was in the summer of 2019.
Shawn Michaels’ last match was the Crown Jewel bout and as for Undertaker, his final match was in 2020 when he filmed the Boneyard match against A.J. Styles for WrestleMania 36.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Six Feet Under with Mark Calaway with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
