The WCW Conspiracy Iceberg EXPLAINED!
21. The Real Reason The Undertaker Became The American Badass
The Undertaker didn’t have the best run throughout the WWE Attitude Era.
This might strike you as odd, or plain wrong. ‘Taker headlined a super-hyped and box office monster of a pay-per-view in SummerSlam 1998 against Stone Cold Steve Austin. He also popped the biggest Raw main event rating ever against the same man, with whom he feuded extensively during the hottest ever period of the promotion. ‘Taker’s other major programme, against storyline brother Kane, is very fondly remembered by many millennial fans. But ‘Taker himself felt the character had grown stale; speaking to the True Geordie in 2022, explaining his evolution, ‘Taker said he felt “boxed in” by the original spooky character. He also reckoned he could do nothing in promo battles against Steve Austin and the Rock, and needed a new persona that would allow him to make witty retorts that would not sound incongruous - and thus, the zombie mortician became the American Badass. It worked; ‘Taker was a known backstage sh*t-shooter, which he translated to TV with ease. His gruff ‘Badass’ deadpan worked far better in the context of the trash-talk-heavy segments of 2000 and beyond. So that’s ‘Taker’s own explanation - but what did Kevin Nash make of it?
Back in 2015, speaking with Extra Mustard, the benevolent Nash reckoned that he was trying to get guys paid - one of whom was the Undertaker. “We had ‘Taker close,” reckons Nash. Nash claims that the Undertaker could not make the jump to WCW under that persona, since it was the intellectual property of WWE, and morphed into the American Badass to make the move feel less jarring. Mark Callaway was going to be the name, and riding hogs was going to be the game in his WCW run.
Nash is a known bullsh*t merchant. He might have made a few people believe this crap if he had said that ‘Taker was going to jump in 1997 or something, but ‘Taker - the conscience of the WWF, Vince McMahon’s most trusted wrestler - was never in one million years going to jump to WCW in May 2000. The promotion might as well have been the USWA at that point, it was so miniscule compared to the Fed.