In late summer 1999, Mark The Undertaker Calaway suffered a serious tear to his groin. By September, he was forced to take time off to rehabilitate the injury and while he was doing so, he suffered another nasty injury, this time to a pectoral muscle. For all practical purposes, the peculiar location of both injuries made it impossible for the big man to train or work out, and since he wasnt a genetic freak like some of his wrestling colleagues, able to maintain a physique without effort, Calaway began to lose conditioning and size. The Undertaker would be away from WWE television for eight months. During that period, he considered for the first time in his career whether it might be time to call it a day. In recent years, Calaway had shifted to working a stiffer, faster, more, intense style befitting the change to the Undertaker character. Despite his height, he had a fairly normal physique: he tended towards tall rather than jacked, and it took a ferocious amount of training to change the shape of his body to the more ripped, cut look that WWF main eventers tended towards. Moreover, hed been at or near the top of the WWF card for nearly ten years. Hed done everything he was asked, had worked through minor injuries to keep his spot and to give back to the company that had placed its faith in him. He was battered to hell and back, and now these two serious injuries had caused him to doubt whether he could carry on at all.
About a year or so ago I went through two really serious injuries, serious enough to where I contemplated retirement. Anyway, I took this ride and I was just, like, everything thats happened over the past ten, eleven years has for some reason brought me to this point. I didnt want to go out in the midst of self-doubt and whether my body was going to hold up anymore. The thought came over me, you know and it was like, you know what? Youre gonna make a comeback. Youre gonna go back to the top of the pile, youre gonna be the big dog in the yard and theres no two ways about it. This Is My Yard, 2001
Calaway decided this wasnt his moment: that he wanted his career to mean more than this. When the Undertaker did return to WWE, it was under the most controversial gimmick variation in his whole career to date. The debut of the American Badass took place at the Judgement Day pay-per-view in May 2000, the Undertaker returning in leather and denim as a more realistic, hardass biker character, which added years onto his career and allowed him to redefine what the Undertaker meant to the WWE and the industry as a whole.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
