10 Things I Hate About The Undertaker
9. The Oldertaker Looks Underwhelming
When your gimmick requires you to be the freakin’ Lord of Darkness, you need to look intimidating, but in recent years, The Undertaker has looked more ridiculous than intimidating.
The word at the time of WrestleMania XXVIII was that he shaved his head because long hair was irritating to deal with, which is fair enough - ginger hair doesn’t hold dye very well, and thinning hair is a bugger to handle, especially when you wear it longer.
The problem is - and I speak from experience - that a shaved head tends to make older men just look even older, emphasising every crease, wrinkle, nook and cranny in an ageing face. He looked middle aged against Triple H in 2012 and CM Punk in 2013. He tried to make amends with the jet black Tutankhamun goatee against Lesnar in 2014, but didn’t seem any kind of match for the Beast Incarnate. He looked skinny, old and frail.
Mark Calaway’s a tall guy with an average physique unless he kills it in the gym, and in spring 2014 he had much more of a swimmer’s body. The concussion he received in the early going in that match only exacerbated the disparity between the two men, it didn’t create it. From the first bell, The Undertaker looked like he’d been thrown to the lions.
After a couple of years with the skinhead look, The Undertaker’s gone back to the well again. He’s been growing his hair out since just before WrestleMania 31, and hey - perhaps sometime in the next couple of years it won’t look like the mullet worn by a geography teacher moonlighting as the bass player in a sh*tty funk band.
But that’s male pattern baldness for you. When I was nineteen, I could grow my hair to my shoulders in a year. These days, the hair on my shoulders grows faster than the hair on my head.
Whatever, the Undertaker’s gotten back to big, menacing size since 2014, and is clearly fitter than he’s been in years. It’d just help everyone to take him a little more seriously if he sorted out his image. More facial hair would be a start. Us old blokes can use beardiness to cover a multitude of sins.