WWE legend The Undertaker reveals he had secret heart operation after WrestleMania and recalls doctor's chilling words
WWE legend The Undertaker has bravely opened up about how a life-saving heart operation helped him escape death.
The Hall of Fame wrestler, whose real name is Mark Calaway, retired back in 2020 after one of the most legendary careers in sport's entertainment.
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He was a staple piece of WWE for decades and has since continued to give back through his Six Feet Under podcast and ambassadorial role for the company.
In the weeks leading up to the WrestleMania 41 weekend in April, Calaway was quietly battling something far more real than the on-screen story-lines of the wrestling world.
According to his wife Michelle McCool, the warning signs began in March, when routine cardiac tests flagged something off with her husband's heart.
Follow-up checks revealed Taker had likely been in chronic atrial fibrillation (AFib) for an unknown length of time.
The 60-year-old had no noticeable symptoms beyond occasional breathlessness — something he'd chalked up to nothing serious.
He was eventually hospitalised for four nights with an ejection fraction (a measure of how much blood the heart pumps with each beat) of just 30 per cent — a dangerously low number for a man of his size and age.
And yet, even with his heart rate unstable, Taker insisted on going to WrestleMania two weeks later, to be there for McCool's Hall of Fame induction — and to induct her personally.
McCool, a two-time WWE Women's Champion, said on the Six Feet Under podcast: "You weren't supposed to go anywhere. You didn't want me to tell anybody.
'That's that old school mentality. I'm not mad at it — because I'd probably be the same patient — but it was terrifying.
'The next morning after returning home from WrestleMania, we were in the hospital in Las Vegas at 6am for a little bit of heart surgery."
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Taker, whose older brother died from a heart attack in 2020, then begrudging admitted: "I wasn't supposed to go to Vegas."
McCool, who is Taker's third wife, added: "You didn't want me to tell anybody. I couldn't focus on anything else.
"All I wanted to focus on was you, your heart, getting the best cardiologists, a lot of phone calls, several nights in the hospital. And by the grace of God, you are here.
"But out of the words of the doctor himself 'it could have turned out badly if we had not found out that very day'."
Taker then coyly joked: "Yeah, well now I'm as strong as a Bull."
Before McCool, who is 15 years his junior, joked back: "And thankfully you can still pretend that you're a dead man. Because I saved your life."
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