8 Vital Elements Behind The Many Faces Of The Undertaker

6. He Had The Full WWF Juggernaut Behind Him

In late 1990, €˜The Undertaker€™ project was Vince McMahon€™s second attempt to make a brand new star, after the Ultimate Warrior. He€™d inherited Hulk Hogan and Hulkamania from the AWA: Terry Bollea had already been doing every aspect of his €˜Hulkster€™ act for two years before bringing it to the WWF. McMahon had taken Hogan and made him the centrepiece of all of his programming in taking the WWF national. Competing with Jim Crockett, Eric Watts and Verne Gagne to see who could make it first, McMahon hadn€™t had the time or the inclination to look at who might take the WWF into the 1990s, but once he had, he threw himself into it with characteristic vigour. The Warrior had been a big hit with the crowd: flush with success, McMahon determined to repeat the trick. Once Mark Calaway was in, he brought the full power of the fledgling WWF production to bear on working on his new star€™s debut.

Vince had already had the idea for the look, having always like the funereal imagery of the Wild West undertaker. That took care of the name, too: originally, Calaway would be billed as Cain The Undertaker, but the first name was quietly dropped almost immediately, only to resurface seven years later with the introduction of the character€™s vengeful half brother. Music and lights were also a factor under consideration: McMahon had seen the importance of strong musical cues when running the rock n€™ wrestling angles back in the eighties: although it was World Class Championship Wrestling, and acts like Hogan and the Fabulous Freebirds who€™d begun using rock music first, McMahon had been introducing his roster with themed entrance music for a while. The Undertaker€™s slow, sinister yet stately funeral march was striking, befitting a character who stalked his prey to the ring. For his television debut in the company in a four-man elimination match at Survivor Series on 22nd November 1990, McMahon had warned the other seven men involved that the new guy was supposed to go over strong: Bret €˜the Hitman€™ Hart, the first man in the match to lock up with Calaway, was told that under no circumstances was the big guy to even leave his feet. That€™s an edict that would stay in place for some time, in order to make it that much more impressive when the Undertaker did go down.

He wasn€™t to be eliminated, either: he attacked an eliminated Dusty Rhodes when the American Dream and €˜Taker€™s manager Brother Love became physical at ringside, and was counted out, despite clearly not being the legal man. Undertaker would be defeated by the Ultimate Warrior at a Madison Square Garden live show in July 1991, and by €˜El Matador€™ Tito Santana in Barcelona in October 1991. However, neither match was televised in the US, and it would be Hulk Hogan who would give him his first recognised loss to regain the WWF Championship, a week after losing it at Survivor Series 1991 and a whole year after the character was born.