Wrestling Headlines/LOP Hall of Fame 2024: The Undertaker

Every name you’ll find in this Hall of Fame deserves to be here. Not the most controversial opening statement, to be sure, but trust me, I’m going somewhere.

Every name deserves to be in this Hall, but for some it seems that the Hall of Fame was created specifically for the purposes of hosting their legacies. For some, their inclusion is such a formality that you’d be forgiven for perhaps assuming they must already be in, that their legacy is of such magnitude that the foundation of the institution could be built upon its back.

Hogan. Flair. Sammartino. Austin.

The Undertaker.

Like all the truly great greats, it shouldn’t have worked out this way. When all factors are taken into consideration, we shouldn’t be here talking about the early 90s undead cowboy mortician who stuck steadfastly to kayfabe in an era when seemingly even ring crew guys were releasing shoot interviews on a weekly basis.

Nobody was paying much mind to the potential Hall of Fame resume of The Master of Pain or Texas Red or Mean Mark Callous before late 1990, to be sure. Big, athletic, obviously talented… but there’s lots of those guys. There was nothing that set him apart, nothing that made him stand out from the crowd of other big dudes who could also look real tough while standing beside a mouthy manager. Then came The Eggman.

Or so Mean Mark thought. After being told he’d never amount to anything and leaving a then fledgling WCW, he received a call from the WWF about coming in with a hot gimmick at Survivior Series. The same Survivior Series upon which a giant egg, incubating on TV for weeks ahead of the Thanksgiving Classic, was set to hatch. Our down on his luck, going nowhere protagonist thought that he was surely going to be asked to shave his head, slap on a white body suit and crawl his 6’10” frame out of a bigass shell to become Eggman, the latest in the growing ranks of outlandish, cartoon-y, kiddie gimmicks that the WWF had taken to rolling out in recent years.

He was instead asked, when he got the call from the boss, if he was ready to become The Undertaker. If anyone was ever seemingly fated to take on a gimmick, it was in this instance. Stale, tired, seen-it-all-before Mean Mark disappeared completely, and in his place grew something unique. Something powerful. Something that quickly outgrew the boundaries set up around it.

Yes, The Undertaker was an undead cowboy mortician, as mentioned before. It should barely have worked when it debuted, let alone grown into a babyface gimmick with perhaps the most loyal, diehard fantasy in the business. Something in the presentation, the darkness, found something inside millions of wrestling fans who, up until this point, hadn’t been served anything quite like it. When he turned from a heel to face, it was an effort to steer into what was already happening. In a sea of bright characters, an era of neon and cheesy smiles, a soulless dark avenging force rose up to grab the imaginations, and loyalty, of every fan who maybe enjoyed horror and/or metal, who had a closet full of black and celebrated Halloween as a lifestyle as opposed to a singular holiday.

The man behind the gimmick was smart enough to know that something so… BIG, could never sustain as time and tastes changed. So The Undertaker evolved. With every incarnation of the character he became a little more vulnerable, a little less Michael Myers and a bit more Clint Eastwood, somehow taking an outlandish character made for what amounted to children’s programming and gradually turning it into one with more depth, nuance and rich backstory than perhaps any in the history of the business. We went from wondering what was in the urn to learning about his mom and dad and tragic childhood, and even, some 7 years into the narrative, got to meet his baby brother.

The fact that the Undertaker spawned an ancillary spin-off character in Kane who would go on to have his own undisputed Hall of Fame level run is frankly astounding. Such was the foundation of dedication to character and fiercely loyal fanbase that Undertaker uniquely presented, which was also the biggest reason against taking the gamble to potentially damage said foundation with his biggest evolution yet. After years of being the most gimmicky gimmick of all the gimmicks, The Deadman became, well, himself.

Fortunately, big tough biker guys fit well into the world of pretend fighting, and though it was relatively short-lived, the American Badass/Big Evil era stands out as a highlight in a career that features more than perhaps any other. Though Bikertaker is looked back on fondly now, the Creatures of the Night, ever loyal, stood by and waited for the return of The Deadman, which eventually came in yet another evolved form, this time with an MMA edge that would carry him through the last near 20 years.

That stat alone is shocking. 20 years, and that’s the back half of his career. Arguably the better half, depending upon whom you’re asking. You may have noticed that we’ve not been discussing many accolades or title wins or milestone moments. Being murdered by all the heels and floating to heaven out of the Tron while looking suspiciously like Marty Jannetty. Fighting his own doppelganger in the main event of SummerSlam, or Tombstoning the shit out of Sid to win the World Championship and close out WrestleMania. The Hell in a Cells, the Buried Alives, the Infernos, the Caskets. The Takeroonie.

The honest truth is that there are far too many to name and, were we to just list them off and toss out flowers for remarkable events, we’d be here for a long, kinda boring time and the mound of blooms would have it looking even more like a funeral. The Undertaker became an invaluable staple of the WWF roster from virtually the moment he set foot in the door, avd maintained that same level of relevance and importance to the company and its locker room for 30+ years. That, alone, is unprecedented.

So yeah, the accolades have stacked up. Let’s scratch the surface for posterity’s sake, shall we?

• 7 World Titles
• 4 PWI Matches of the Year
• 5 Slammy Award Matches of the Year
• 174 PPV matches
• 73 PPV main events
• 21 match Undefeated WrestleMania Streak
• 25-2 WrestleMania record

These are all hard numbers. Then there are the subjective accolades that are widely considered just as factual.

Greatest gimmick of all time.

Greatest big man of all time,

Greatest WrestleMania match of all time.

All titles that have been bestowed upon The Undertaker by way of polls and opinion pieces and documentaries and expert analysis over the course of his last 34 years of consistently captivating performance. And we haven’t even gotten into Wrestler’s Court or the legendary tales of toughness or the million other little things that all add up to make The Undertaker one of the most impactful, important and outright mythical figures in the history of professional wrestling.

We’re almost done, but Taker is more than stats and cool stories to some of us. On a personal level, The Undertaker has been my favorite wrestler since sometime around 1992, when I first saw him drop a jobber on their head and zip them up in a bodybag on WWF Superstars. I’d never seen anything like it and, despite marketing to the spooky kids becoming an increasingly common and reliable business strategy in the decades since, I’ve yet to see anything match it. I was immediately hooked, and it wasn’t very long before my childhood hero, Hulk Hogan, had to take the first of unfortunately many steps down my all-time favorites ladder. There was a new #1and now, some 32 years later, I don’t foresee a time in which that will ever change.

People often think there’s something wrong with the folks into spooky or dark stuff. That’s not always the case, of course, but yeah, I’ve got my baggage. Some of yours, too, I think, maybe some of that guy’s… ok, it has occasionally been a full on airport carousel. I digress.

In my mid-20s or so, sometime around the beginning of the year, I kinda hit a wall. I was done. The mental stuff had beaten me down, I didn’t see anything left to hold onto (even though it was all around me) and I was frankly ready to end my life. And then The Undertaker saved my life. Kinda.

I had determined that my journey would end with me hanging by a belt from my closet. Depression is a beast, folks, and will try to talk you into some really stupid shit. As I was getting ready and shoved my shirts (all black, of course) to the side so that I could hook the belt up, something caught my eye. An Undertaker shirt.

I took it off the hanging pole thingy and looked at it. Something in my my brain had rustled, and I may have seen a glimmer of light shine through the fog for just a moment as a thought drifted to the surface.

If I took myself out now, I would never find out who was going to challenge The Streak at WrestleMania that year.

I can’t speak for everyone who brawls it out with depression. In my case, I tend to stave it off by constantly keeping something to look forward to, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant or completely inconsequential to anyone other than myself. That day, my dark passenger had talked me into believing that there truly was nothing else to look forward to. Life was all bullshit, it always had been bullshit and it would never be anything more than bullshit… but wait. That’s not true. Wrestling isn’t bullshit. Undertaker isn’t bullshit. I love that stuff. And that Streak, man, that’s awesome. I look forward to that every year. If they ever break the Strea…

And there it was. I was excited about something, even if it was but a tiny bit. I had something to look forward to. No matter how trivial it may seem, believe me, nothing is trivial. I am alive today because of The Undertaker. The undead cowboy mortician from the pretend fighting show gave me a reason to live when the fog was too dense to see any of the others surrounding me.

I can’t pay that back, you know? That’s gonna be with me forever. The Undertaker will be with me forever.

Such is the sheer magnitude of some legacies, even if only to a select few. In this case, it’s more than a few. Every single name in this Hall of Fame deserves to be listed among its ranks. A few, though, transcend this or any other box you may try to fit them into. For many among us, no legacy towers as tall as that of The Phenom. The Deadman. The Demon of Death Valley. The Undertaker.

Ironically, things like this just ensure that his legacy will never be condemned to simply rest in peace.

It is my absolute pleasure to introduce The Undertaker into the Wrestling Headlines Hall of Fame Class of 2024. Even though y’all should’ve voted him in years ago.

(Editor’s Note: Steven forgot about the rule that states wrestlers have to be 3 years removed from retirement to be nominated.)