10 Things I Hate About The Undertaker
2. He Does Whatever He's Told
The problem with a winning streak angle for a babyface is that it goes nowhere good. This one wasn’t just a winning streak… it was THE Streak. Definite article, capital ‘S’. Because Orton, Angle or whoever might have been the man’s preferred choice didn’t make the WWE’s grade, the Streak ended up being built up so much that there was nothing that could be done with it.
Well, the word is that Mark Calaway had wanted to lose at WrestleMania for years. Depending on which story you listen to, he’s been set on Randy Orton doing the honours, then on Kurt Angle before he was fired, Edge was rumoured and even Batista at one point.
During those glory years, The Undertaker was wrestling actual up-and-comers at WrestleMania, not just big dumb b*stards groomed to face him and then placed back in the midcard where they belonged, but proper main event level talent in the making.
Vince McMahon is a man’s man, who famously decides on pushes talent based upon whether he thinks the performer in question could win a big fight in real life. ‘The Undertaker’ is a joint creation between McMahon and Calaway, and it’s been said that the two are tight like blood relatives.
Moreover, Calaway never quit, never leveraged a deal elsewhere to make more money, has always been a McMahon man, in sickness and in health… ‘til death us do part.
The Streak, Bray Wyatt, the transitional championships, that pitiful quarter-century celebration with a ten-minute tag team match last year, that rubbish at WrestleMania this year: these are all things that a man with stroke could have fixed with a simple “no”.
And the fact is, short of Triple H himself (and maybe not even then), no one has the pull with Vince McMahon that Mark Calaway does.
It's Vince McMahon who's carefully crafted the Undertaker's career in this manner, who’s had the first and last word in everything Undertaker-related from year one. Mark Calaway has the influence to have bent his ear the other way when it counted - but he's not done so.
Instead, whether it’s made sense or not, whether it’s looked good or not, whether it’s made the show better or not, whether it’s good for his character and his legacy or not, whether it’s good for other people and their careers or not. Mark Calaway has always done exactly what his increasingly out-of-touch, creatively bankrupt boss has told him to do.