A real-life fight once forced Vince McMahon to change The Undertaker's WWE WrestleMania opponent

A promising WWE star's push was abruptly canceled after he upset Vince McMahon following a real-life incident. Kevin Fertig, a former WWE Superstar, almost got to face The Undertaker at WrestleMania before a real-life fight ruined everything for him.

Shortly after WrestleMania XX in 2004, Kevin Fertig was put on the SmackDown brand. He donned the gimmick of Mordecai, a creepy, religious character who targeted the brand's popular babyfaces one after the other.

Mordecai picked wins over Scotty 2 Hotty and Hardcore Holly at two back-to-back SmackDown-exclusive pay-per-views before losing to Rey Mysterio on the blue brand and then vanished from TV like he never existed. In reality, Vince McMahon had ended Mordecai's push after he was involved in a bar fight.

Check out what he said on Sportskeeda Wrestling's UnSKripted back in 2021:

"I was supposed to go against The Undertaker [and] Eddie Guerrero. I was supposed to do a lot of stuff. But I ended up being an idiot and I got into a fight in a bar and it just didn't work out - just didn't work out that way, man. So, live and learn. Getting told you are about to go against The Undertaker and possibly main-event a WrestleMania match - I don't know if you have the, I guess, business sense [in one's late 20s]. You always say, 'Hey, if I could have, would have, should have back then...' Now at 45, if I could have known what I know now and done it then, it would have been a totally different ballgame."

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The Undertaker ended up facing a massive name at WWE WrestleMania 21

Mordecai was gone from WWE TV on the road to SummerSlam 2004. Months later, on the road to WrestleMania 21, RAW's Randy Orton kicked off a feud with SmackDown's The Undertaker.

As for Mordecai, he was later repackaged as Kevin Thorn and was a mainstay on WWE's ECW brand for a brief period. He got to compete at WrestleMania 23 when The ECW Originals took on The New Breed in an Eight-Man Tag Team match.

On This Day in WWE

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#OnThisDayInWWE 20 years ago on #SmackDown: The last televised match Mordecai had in the WWE, losing his undefeated streak to Rey Mysterio

Thorn, Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, and Matt Striker lost to Rob Van Dam, Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, and The Sandman that night in 2007. One wonders where Fertig would be today if he hadn't gotten involved in that ill-timed bar fight that night. Would he have become one of WWE's top heels over the next few years? We'll never know.