The Undertaker Reveals Why He Called Out Brock Lesnar at UFC 121 Back in 2010

The Undertaker finally came clean about a decade-old mystery this week. Back in October 2010 he appeared at the UFC 121 event in Anaheim, California, which saw Brock Lesnar drop the UFC Heavyweight Championship to Cain Velasquez in the main event. "The Deadman" then made headlines when, while giving an interview with Ariel Helwani, he turned to Lesnar as he was making his way backstage and said, "You wanna do it?" Fans weren't sure if this was leading to The Undertaker stepping inside The Octagon (it wasn't) or if this was setting up for Lesnar's return to the WWE (it was, but it wound up happening later than expected), but it turned heads nonetheless and was never followed up on.

On Wednesday Undertaker, real name Mark Calaway, sat down with Helwani to explain what happened that night. "The Phenom" revealed his intention was to try and draw Lesnar back to WWE, something that wound up happening in April 2012.

"I was there to pick a fight. I was sent there personally to pick a fight, and I was unaware that Dana [White] had no clue what was going to happen, which I felt horrible about after the fact," he said. "I thought there had been some kind of discussion between him and Vince [McMahon]. At that time Brock was so hot in the MMA world, so obviously ... I was like, 'You know what? Why not try it?' There was no personal animosity really. But it was basically me saying, 'All right, you left our world, I'm going to come into your world and I'm going to call you out.'" That was it, obviously it was a huge media storm."

Helwani then asked by "fight" if Taker meant an MMA fight.

"A wrestling fight," he said with a chuckle. "I was trying to get him back in my world. I'm pretty gutsy, but my days of getting in the Octagon are far past me. I thought, obviously there was such a history there because of his run with WWE and his success with UFC, this is huge if I can make it happen. That's what it was all about."

He added that Lesnar knew he was going to be there, but didn't know what he was going to try (though he did point out that Lesnar deliberately walked right past him).

From the time Lesnar returned in 2012 to now, The Undertaker and "The Beast" have wrestled three matches, the last of which was at the 2015 Hell in a Cell pay-per-view.

The Undertaker's five-part WWE Network documentary series, Undertaker: The Last Ride, premiered its first episode this past Sunday.