10 Secret Genius Details Behind Wrestler Entrances
4. The Undertaker Takes It Slow
The Undertaker's Old School rope-walk is so much dumber than any tiresome "wrestling sucks now, it made more sense when I liked it" takes will tell you.
Reduce the components: an undead mortician walked very slowly in the most vulnerable position one could possibly find themselves in a wrestling ring as his opponent simply walked alongside him under no duress. That opponent was selling being dazed, if you want to apply a semblance of logic to the spot, but if he was truly knocked on his arse, the guy would be on his arse, and not walking and waiting for the resulting strike.
The move always got over big - which is more important than it making sense - because the Undertaker was such a commanding presence. "The Undertaker walked slowly to evoke dread" is not a hot take, at all, but the genius of the entrance is in how it informed the heft of his in-ring work. He paralysed men in fear from the second he emerged from gorilla.
He was creeping death in his prime spooky years, and his deliberate movements were always so much more unsettling than the lightning and resurrection bullsh*t that too often surrounded his character.