The Undertaker was defeated by Maven in the 2002 Royal Rumble bout. The co-winner of the first season of “WWE Tough Enough” was then pushed over the top rope before being repeatedly struck with a steel chair by the WWE Hall of Famer in retribution. Maven, who learned on the day that he would be removing Undertaker from the ring in that year’s Royal Rumble, spoke about the implications of doing so while participating in SiriusXM’s “Busted Open Radio” program.
He used to constantly give me the side look before Andrew [Martin] Test passed, Maven recalled. “Before he died away, we were pretty close, but he had no difficulty telling me he wasn’t on board. D-Von [Dudley] detested me more than anyone else, in fact. D-Von is still one of my closest buddies. I can’t, however, swear that any of them were mistaken. People sometimes fail to comprehend that professional wrestling has nothing to do with deserving, even if I didn’t deserve to be where I was. People desire and hope that it will, but it has nothing to do with this matter.
Maven claimed that wrestlers are positioned in particular ways because people in production meetings believe they will elicit a response from the audience. The former WWE Hardcore Champion said that if decisions were made based on which wrestlers were deserving of particular positions, then the top stars would all be “five [foot and] nine [inch], five [foot and] ten [inch] guys that can work their tails off, do Broadways every night.” Maven claimed that the company’s primary goal is to amuse customers.
