Did The Undertaker use his influence to nix a Diva’s Championship story?
Outside of the pro wrestling world, The Undertaker and Michelle McCool have been catching some heat from fans lately. First it started when the WWE Hall of Famer replaced Mickie James on the LFG series.
Reportedly, Taker implied that he would be willing to stay on the show if his wife was involved. The former WWE Champion wasn’t necessarily looking to take Mickie off the series, but she ended up being the odd woman out in this situation.
Then, Michelle McCool replaced original Six Feet Under co-host Matthew Lyda. Matthew and Taker hosted the podcast until it was purchased by WWE earlier this year, with the former being removed. Now there’s no confirmation that Taker personally opted to get rid of Matthew as it sounded more like a WWE decision, at least according to Matthew.
Fans haven’t been happy about the podcast as of late and Taker and his wife had to come out and address the criticism on a recent episode of the podcast.
“I’m pretty sure if you asked 99.5% of the men I’ve been in a dressing room with, they’d tell you that no matter the clout people think I have, I never used it for that kind of stuff. It’s absurd that people on the internet throw around phrases like ‘reliable sources’ and everyone believes it. I’m not going to go into details or give anyone the satisfaction of explaining myself. A lot of people online assume things and say, ‘Well, that’s what she’d do if she had that kind of juice.’ That’s the problem — you all are the problem. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can line up in a field — I’ll bend over and they can line up and kiss my ass.”
Well, we don’t have any factual stories on whether this is true or not, but Freddie Prinze Jr just came out with some news that doesn’t put Michelle McCool or Undertaker in a good light. He talked about Michelle losing the Diva’s Championship (Freddie was a WWE writer from 2008 to 2009) on the Wrestling with Freddie podcast. The story originally came out in 2022, but it's catching some heat now due to the narrative about Taker using his influence.
Freddie goes over how he approached McCool about the story and her face going pale when she was told about dropping the belt at the Royal Rumble.
“I go to work, somewhere in the arena, backstage and Michelle comes up to me and says ‘Stephanie says you want to talk to me about the women’s storyline.’ We sit down in the cafeteria off to the side, and I start pitching to her what it’s gonna be. It wasn’t right on my part. I get to the Royal Rumble and I explain to her that the suggestion is that she drops the title at the Royal Rumble and then I keep telling the story of where it finishes because she deserves to know the whole story.
It gets all the way to WrestleMania which would be Beth and Kia [Kharma] and her face just goes pale. All the color just drops right out of her skin and right away I know I’ve done something terrible. I just don’t know what is it yet because this is hindsight and I was in the moment. So I go ‘what’s wrong?’ and her eyes well up and I’m like ‘what did I do? What did I do?’ and she said ‘I didn’t think I’d be losing the belt before WrestleMania. She was upset, and in hindsight, rightfully so.”
Freddie acknowledges that he made a mistake in telling her the story without it getting approved by McCool first. According to the former WWE writer, he did get the story approved by Stephanie McMahon, Michael Hayes, and Vince McMahon. However, Michale Hayes ended up telling him that the storyline was no longer taking place.
“[Hayes told me] ‘Freddie there’s a problem with your diva’s storyline and we need to talk about it.’ He goes ‘it’s gone.’ I go ‘what do you mean it’s gone man?’ And he goes ‘it’s gone.’ I said ‘what happened?’ He goes ‘well Michelle said that you and her talked and she didn’t really like the story so it’s gone.’ He goes ‘Freddie, she talked to Undertaker, Undertaker talked to Vince, the story’s gone.”
Michelle and The Undertaker have not addressed this story as of yet; however, it does go against Taker’s narrative that he’s never used his power for influence throughout his career. As of now, since there not any evidence to this story, so all we can do is take this with a grain of salt.