25 Most OUT OF POCKET WWE Attitude Era Moments
20. Paul Bearer Gets A Gimmick Update
Everybody had to tweak their presentation in the Attitude Era, lest they get left behind.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley couldn’t play the role of a blue blood aristocrat, so by late 1997, he played a douchebag college frat boy (who didn’t drink a drop of alcohol). Billy Gunn couldn’t play a rockabilly music star, so he also played a foul-mouthed brat. Kurt Angle couldn’t play an Olympic hero earnestly, so he became a morally sanctimonious blowhard hypocrite. Everybody was at it. Even the occupational gimmicks were reworked to fit the new tone; where there was once a plumber and a dentist, in Val Venis, there was now a male pornographic actor. In the most bizarre and wildly unnecessary revamp of the day, Paul Bearer evolved from warbling, sinister funeral director to mad shagger. What?
In early 1998, Bearer claimed to have had an affair with the Undertaker’s momma, and was thus the biological father of Kane. In a hidden camera segment, Bearer claimed to Jerry Lawler that he was a 19 year-old apprentice at the funeral home. After a night drinking beer at a wrestling show, he was seduced by ‘Taker’s mother. A young Undertaker almost caught Bearer in the act. (This was round two, presumably, since this was the night Kane was conceived. Bear must have spilled his porridge already).
Lawler loved this story, and used it as an excuse to make some alliterative sex analogies, like “Slipped the salami” and “buried the baloney”.
We now know where Bearer got his “Oh, yessssss!” catchphrase.