10 Things I Hate About The Undertaker

It’s absolutely insulting to the legacy of such a great character that he was shoehorned into WrestleMania 32 as he was… but then these days, the Undertaker is beginning to be more of a WrestleMania mascot than a genuine main event.

As I’ve mentioned already, his 25th anniversary ‘celebration’ was even worse: the monumental milestone was acknowledged by having him and Kane go over the Wyatt Family easily in a nothing tag team match, just so the Dead Man could be wheeled out for the show.

In 2016, he’s in real danger of tarnishing a legacy arguably as great as any other in professional wrestling history.

Look at Ric Flair. In 2016, you've got to squint really, really hard to see the greatest wrestler in history behind the wacky old geezer that burbles drunkenly all over his podcast and interferes in his daughter’s matches or makes an exhibition of himself in public; past the baggy sack of walnuts that wrestled for that last couple of years in TNA and overseas, or even past the Dirtiest Player In The Game that propped himself up in the WWE for the final few years before that.

That's the position the Undertaker finds himself in now, and it's worse because he's being feted as a special attraction. As long as he 'okays' it, they’re not going to stop pumping up his ego and wheeling him out every year on the Grandest Stage Of Them All.

Every year, McMahon goes to the Undertaker, to The Rock, to Austin and to Michaels and asks whether they’re up for one more match at WrestleMania, and regardless of the response, every year he’s back asking again. The Undertaker’s the only one who turns up to wrestle every year, and every year now it’s to diminishing returns, and for less and less reason.

It’s about time he wrote himself a final chapter and learned the word ”no”. He owes McMahon and the WWF/E a lot - his career, his lifestyle, even meeting his wife - but his legacy is his and his alone.