10 Things I Hate About The Undertaker

I’m well aware that I’m not exactly standing shoulder to shoulder with most of the people reading this when I say this, but… the American Badass variant of Mark Calaway’s Undertaker gimmick was far and away the best he’s worked with.

Unlike many of the twenty-somethings writing all these articles burying that iteration of The Undertaker, I was actually watching the WWF during the period we’re talking about, not playing catch-up on YouTube, Wikipedia and the Network fifteen years later. The Undertaker was over like clover: this so-called unpopular gimmick change was embraced by the fans, casual or otherwise.

It was Calaway’s favourite too, and for good reason. He finally got to pull the Satanic stick out of the Undertaker’s rear end and deliver actual promos - not ridiculous occult sermons in an unnaturally slow and deep register - proving that he could really talk when they let him.

Remember, he’s the guy that cut off the Austin-inspired ‘WHAT?’ chant right from the beginning, something few have been able to do since.

He got to wrestle matches properly, at the right speed, selling like a normal big man would, not as a paranormal special effect in tights. He got to take part in real angles with backstage segments to help put over stories. Eventually, he even got to play a proper bullying, underhanded heel, not an eeevil cult leader or Frankenstein’s bloody monster.

People keep going on and on and on about ‘The Undertaker’ being the greatest professional wrestling gimmick of all-time. It’s absolutely not, it’s a bloody mess: a massive pain to work with for him, his opponents and the agents laying out his matches, with no personality to sell a storyline or an injury, and a gaping hole where credibility should be.

The supernatural Dead Man has always sucked - it’s a terrible idea that (protected from on high by the WWF/E’s real prince of darkness, Vince McMahon) Mark Calaway carried through sheer talent and that magnetic presence of his. The irony is that, although no one could have made such a worthless character work except for Calaway, it’s likely that Calaway himself would never have been as huge as he became without it.

The current incarnation is a hybrid of the original Dead Man, the Lord Of Darkness and the Big Evil characters, and it’s that last that’s the most important, not the first. Without that element of the character, he wouldn’t have been able to have half the acclaimed matches he’s had in the last decade.

People burying the ‘Bikertaker’ gimmick change from 2000 to 2004 need to remember one thing: the Dead Man’s only ever been entertaining in the ring when he’s moved away from the Dead Man gimmick.