The Undertaker explained how he and Shawn Michaels managed to surprise Triple H with his WWE Hall of Fame induction announcement during a company town hall meeting. Speaking on Busted Open Radio, The Undertaker detailed the coordination behind the unexpected moment.
It was such an inside job. It just reaffirms that if you want to, you can still kayfabe. You can still keep things on the low-key and surprise people. To be able to pull the wool over Triple H—who has his hands in everything—on so many levels, I was proud and honoured because it was him. I have so much history with him. But to be able to pull that off… You have Shawn coming from Atlanta, I’m coming from Austin.
The Deadman revealed that even Stephanie McMahon was caught off guard by their appearance.
To get from those places without people knowing anything, to get to the office while they’re on stage doing whatever town hall there was, and to get all the way into Gorilla position and look at Stephanie, who was there to have lunch afterwards. She was looking at me like, ‘Why are y’all here?’ She’s thinking in her head that I’m there to promote LFG, so it was such a great hit. He’s the decision-maker. He can’t put himself in there—people are gonna sh*t all over that. So it had to be done. It was so stealthy, it was so well done. Nick Khan called me and Shawn and said, ‘What do we think?’. We put a plan together, it was implemented to perfection, and we caught him off guard.
Triple H Initially Resisted Hall of Fame Induction
During the Royal Rumble post-show, Triple H addressed his initial reluctance to accept a Hall of Fame induction.
Nick and I talked about the Hall of Fame many times, and he would always bring up the fact that, when are we gonna put you in, and I would say, not now, because no matter how I do it, it looks like I’m putting myself in the Hall of Fame, and I’m just not gonna do that, so he said we have to do it eventually, and I was like, okay, if we have to do it eventually, let’s wait three, four, five years and then we’ll talk about it, and he said okay.
The surprise announcement came during a WWE town hall after Triple H overlooked the meeting’s final segment.
We had an entirely different plan for Hall of Fame, and we got to the end of the town hall and Shawn’s music hit, I thought, honestly, being lazy, I didn’t read the end of the town hall run sheet and there was more after the Q&A that I just didn’t see, and I was like, oh, Shawn’s gonna come out here and talk about the new show we’re doing, LFG, and put that over, so I was confused when Shawn came out, when Taker came out it doubled, then I saw Nick walk to the other side of the room, and I realized, that somehow this is gonna affect me. I wasn’t sure positively, negatively, humorously, until Taker said WrestleMania.