10 WWE Stars Undertaker Failed To Elevate To The Next Level

8. Rikishi

For quite some time, WWE tried to elevate Rikishi into the main event. After he was revealed to have ran Austin down, he was supposed to be presented as a major wrestler all of a sudden, despite having spent years as a midcarder. Part of this attempt to establish him as a main-eventer involved pairing him with the Undertaker for a while and building a rivalry between them. Unfortunately, Rikishi didn't benefit that much from this feud. Even though Rikishi eliminated the Undertaker from the 2001 Royal Rumble and got Chokeslammed off of the cell onto a truck at Armageddon 2000, that didn't help his main-event career take off. Undertaker tried to make this rivalry work, but despite defeating the Undertaker in both singles and tag team competition, the audience didn't buy the notion of Rikishi as a World-Champion-calibre athlete. A big part of that is how he was booked as a heel. He was still giving his opponents the Stinkface, and when he spoke, he did so with an underlying face tone. As such, he couldn't be taken seriously as the kind of 'evil bad guy' that could've run Steve Austin down. But as we've seen with the Undertaker before and after this rivalry, when his opponents face him, they're suddenly treated like a much bigger deal. But that treatment didn't work with Rikishi.