10 Important Steps In The Undertaker's WWE Evolution

3. Switching To Smaller Opponents

For the majority of his career, the Undertaker was often called a giant-slayer, despite himself being a big man. He was put in feuds against bigger men than him, as a means of making the already massive Undertaker seem threatened. There was one problem with this theory, however: most of those bigger men were terrible wrestlers. It has often been said that out of all the wrestlers in the WWE, no Superstar has improved in terms of match quality more than the Undertaker. His earlier matches were slow and often boring. Because he was staying to his gimmick as much as possible, he no-sold much of his opponent€™s offense, making it very hard to really create any drama in his matches. Just look at the opponents he€™s had to deal with in the past: Giant Gonzalez, King Kong Bundy, the fake Undertaker, Mabel, Diesel, Sycho Sid, KroniK, Heidenreich, The Great Khali, the list goes on. The point here is that when the Undertaker fought against superstars that were either his size or bigger, those matches were generally poor (with some exceptions). However, when you look at his matches with smaller opponents, those matches are by comparison much better. His WrestleMania matches against Randy Orton, Edge, CM Punk, and of course Shawn Michaels were fantastic. His matches against Kurt Angle at No Way Out 2006, against Bret Hart at One Night Only in 1997, and against Shawn Michaels in the first Hell in a Cell at Badd Blood 1997 were among the best non-WrestleMania matches of his career. What did these matches all have in common? The Undertaker€™s opponents were all smaller than him. They weighed at the most 240lbs, and they were technicians who could carry themselves in a match. This marks a major point in his evolution: people realized that the big-man could have the best matches on the card, despite his size. By making this change, the Undertaker would go from having some of the most disappointing WrestleMania matches to stealing the show in the latter end of his career. So much so that his WrestleMania matches with Shawn Michaels were arguably the best of his career, and their first encounter at WrestleMania 25 continues to be praised as one of, if not the greatest matches in WrestleMania history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4HrTYf41jY Quite a transformation for a man who once barely moved at all in the ring.