The Undertaker has given his thoughts on the evolution of professional wrestling and how the style has altered in the past few years.
Having made his name in the ’90s and a top star in the industry for the next 2 decades, Undertaker became the locker room leader in WWE and was highly respected by the roster throughout his tenure and beyond. While The Phenom was successful in his character work and in-ring work, the modern era has prioritised the latter more with flashy moves being more common in matches and work rate being at an all-time high. While the fans are entertained by what they see and the general match quality has been raised across the board, the Hall of Famer has some reservations.
Speaking with “Mighty” Demetrious Johnson, Undertaker noted that while he is aware that right now WWE has been hotter than it has ever been, he is concerned about the lack of character work and how big moves are being executed instead:
“There’s nothing that I can say that like, ‘They should probably be doing this,’ Because they’re killing it. They’re killing it. The only thing that worries me, because I know the physical shape and condition that I’m in, and the things that I’ve had to do since I’ve been in the business, is I worry about their longevity, because of how much they continue to push the envelope.”
“What ends up happening a lot of times. You mentioned it a little bit earlier, about like the character development. There was a time period there, where the character development was really lacking and the athleticism part was there. So they would, they started doing these crazy moves to [compensate].”
Continuing, Undertaker also added that as wrestlers are continually pushing the envelope physically, there are limits:
Then what they end up trying to do is like, okay, well, after two or three times of seeing a double backflip twist off the top rope to the floor, your audience gets desensitized to that, like ‘I’ve seen that. What do you got now?’ Now you have to push the envelope a little bit further, and there’s limitations to what the human body can do. But if you can get them invested in the character, you either gotta make them love you, or you gotta make them hate you.”
Concluding his thoughts, Undertaker stated that he wanted to see character development focused on more as the law of averages will eventually not work in a wrestler’s favour:
“That’s kind of the one thing that I wish, as a whole, that there would be more of, just because, you know what most people don’t realize about wrestling. What people really don’t realize is that within any given match, on any given night, you’re two inches away from something catastrophic happening. Regardless of how much training you’ve had.
Then when you think about the number of dates per year that you’re working, that risk factor goes up exponentially. When you’re doing double back flips off of the top rope into a group of people, it only takes one time.”
Recently, a rising WWE star with a more grounded style issued a challenge to The Undertaker.
The Undertaker Admits We Was Wrong
While many of the Hall of Famer’s instincts enabled him to become one of the most successful wrestlers of all time and have a lengthy career, not every prediction turned out to be true. Speaking on his podcast, The Undertaker admitted he was wrong about The Rock.
A major feature in many Survivor Series events, The Undertaker recently chose his WWE dream team.
H/t to SEScoops.