Old Lives Matter

[Millard Rausch]

Cracking comeback lad.

[BrodyGraham]

Everytime someone from Taker's generation starts going on about wrestling not feeling real anymore and putting it on the younger generation of talent, I die a little bit inside.

Do you know which generation killed kayfabe? Taker's generation, when they literally stood there whilst Vince went on TV before Raw and admitted that it was a work. 

He was in the prime of his career when Cornette did that ridiculous 'Shoot' on the NWO but hasn't spoken out about that. Instead he's inferring that a generation of wrestlers that have inherited much less favourable conditions in which to make themselves stars, are the problem.

Taker's act would simply not have worked if he'd been trading wins every week on TV with Tito Santana through 90/91. So how do we expect today's guys to become 'Stars'? He debuted at a PPV after being teased by one of the top heels in the company. How many people get that now? How many people get weeks of vignettes establishing a character/hyping their arrival. It doesn't happen to guys nowadays but, shit in Taker's day even Steve Keirn got weeks of Skinner vignettes. And that was to be glorified job fodder. 

He's someone who had very favourable treatment from the magic pencil for 30 years. He lucked into being a young, big guy at a time when WWE were transitioning into focussing on slightly smaller guys. His job for the prime years of his career was basically to be a boss monster for Shawn and Bret. I struggle to think of anyone who we view as a legend today who has benefitted so much from smoke and mirrors as him.

To be honest him being an absolute shithouse in real life has been sort of gratifying. Not surprising in the least, it's been about a year since he spent the week with notorious Tiger weirdo/ culty sex trafficker weirdo Doc Antle. 

Anyway, ramble aside, not a fan for all sorts of reasons. Fuck him.

[Jackpot]

Is it really that big a deal or surprise what's been said? 

He liked the locker room better when he first got into the business. Well a lot of people in all walks of life preferred things back in their day or what they grew up experiencing. Souness and Keane have both had a go at modern day central midfielders because they don't do what they did. Noel Gallagher doesn't have a good word for current musicians. 

I don't necessarily agree that having a knife or gun on you makes you a man, I personally think it makes you a shit house in all honesty but it doesn't surprise me that The Undertaker thinks things were better back then. The making themselves pretty argument is something I've said myself about modern football - they spend more time doing their hair than they do practicing how to play. David James was known for having an addiction to consoles, no fucking wonder he was such a shit keeper.

All it is, is a perfect example of somebody who hasn't moved with the times. He's not alone in that and as somebody said earlier in the discussion, today's crop of wrestlers will be having the same concerns when they retire and the next lot are doing things they weren't.

[air_raid]

8 minutes ago, BrodyGraham said:

He lucked into being a young, big guy at a time when WWE were transitioning into focussing on slightly smaller guys.

Even luckier than you make it sound! He was brought in to be another monster to work with and eventually lose to Hogan, and the transition was forced upon the WWF by steroids, Arsenio etc.

Although let’s not kid ourselves re : Bret and Shawn. Taker had to maintain his popularity through a string of Kamala, Giant Gonzalez, Yokozuna, Bundy, Mabel feuds long before he was privileged enough to get a big TV match with either of them.

[LaGoosh]

When Don Callis was in WWF back in 97-98 he had major backstage heat due to being perceived as arrogant (other people since have just said that he was reserved/kind of quiet which was interpreted by some in the locker room as arrogant). Undertaker in particular seemed to take a real disliking to him to the point that he forced a young Jeff and Matt Hardy to break off the keys to his rental car in his door during a show, thereby stranding him in some random town and leaving him with a hefty bill from the rental company. 

So he's always been an arsehole, basically. I'd rather work in an environment of video game nerds than bullies, drug addicts and psychos personally. I think the older generations were so sensitive and secretly ashamed about being "fake" wrestlers that they were always desperate to show how tough they really were. While today's lot don't have those mental hang ups and toxic personality traits.

[Perry]

On 1/22/2021 at 3:45 PM, jazzygeofferz said:

Was he bitching about them all playing videogames because he had nobody to play Dominoes with anymore? 

Back in the day when they couldn't find a domino board, the lads used to have a wager on the side by counting the blackheads on Taker's nose

[DavidB6937]

To be fair if my last experience of video games was the recent WWE one then I'd be shitting all over them too.

[The King Of Swing]

7 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Undertaker in particular seemed to take a real disliking to him to the point that he forced a young Jeff and Matt Hardy to break off the keys to his rental car in his door during a show, thereby stranding him in some random town and leaving him with a hefty bill from the rental company. 

Definitely sounds like something "a real man" would do.

Wasn't there stories about him telling anyone who would listen that he could totally make in in MMA if he wanted to? 

Like I've said in the past. Wrestling is fucking weird. 

[Keith Houchen]

I’ve no doubt a lot of wrestlers are tough but their insecurities about play fighting are always a joy to hear about. It’s like when chefs act like alpha male dickheads to project their masculinity because deep down in their insecure minds they know they’re doing a woman’s job. 

[Liam O'Rourke]

Ah, I love a good Taker debate. When we did the SCG Trial of Taker, as prosecution I ended up looking at his career from as sceptical a standpoint as possible, and doing so really opened my eyes to the reality of his career.

I've always had a theory, one I've never really been able to flesh out, that Undertaker, due to his longevity and the fact he has been protected at the same level forever, was for a lot of people the last string connecting them to the way they used to look at wrestling when they were younger. Undertaker is awesome, Undertaker is special, Undertaker is a brilliant character. Isn't this entrance incredible? Everything else in wrestling, as you learn more about it, kind of unravels and you figure out the machinations. Undertaker is like wrestling Santa Claus, and for so many years people believed what they were told about Taker because, frankly, they wanted to, because it was a nice feeling to be consistent with something you felt once upon a time. 

The truth, however, is that Undertaker's biggest success is sticking around for a long time, playing the game well enough with Vince that he was seen as above the fray, even when there was little to no evidence that he actually deserved to be, outside of being the last great creation of Vince's first big run before it all fell apart. The idea that Undertaker became a "special attraction" is always something I've found laughable, especially when people compare him to Andre. If you truly compare the role to Andre, Taker is a special attraction that didn't draw in a special way. Andre got that mantle by travelling the country for years and drawing the biggest houses of the year for a territory, ending by setting all time records with Hogan. Taker's success at the box office is specifically tied to his opponent and the situation he's in. Which doesn't make him special, that's the same as anyone else. Taker was never the top guy in the promotion. If you watch his title run in 1997, the TV is all about Bret, Shawn and Austin. Taker is a distant fourth place. He was never the top guy - he was a guy you protect and then you can put him in with a real star for a one off and draw well...sometimes. The idea the streak was a difference maker is provably false as well - the only time it was ever put on top, Mania dipped hard (26). 

The biggest thing to say about Taker being an all-time great goes back to a question I'd love somebody to answer in a way that pushes the Taker side of things, not to challenge it, but because I legit want to see the case for it - does the trajectory of the WWF at any point change if Undertaker isn't there? And if not, how many tippy-top all-time greats can you say that for?

Perhaps the ultimate irony of Taker is his decision to do humanising interviews and finally tell people Santa isn't real, is that people start to analyse years of subpar, or in some cases downright awful, output, without grading it on an emotional or promotionally-pushed curve. No doubt he had his moments and successes, but relative to the push or mantle people seem to place him on? I don't think so. 

[Kaz Hayashi]

I think he’s full of shit and is playing to a perceived audience. 
I was running a Grapple Arcade gaming area at a wrestling convention in 2019, when Undertaker was there. I saw him look over a few times, and I could tell he was dying to have a blast on In Your House on the Saturn against Virgil. 

[FlushFunk]

The fact is if Undertaker wasn’t a Trump voter or hadn’t said he didn’t think video games had a place in the locker room nobody would be shitting on him.

Today’s talent is soft. That’s a true statement. Some prefer it. He doesn’t. And unfortunately for many his opinion holds a lot of weight & hurts because it hits home.

[Joe Blog]

He did dives to the outside, fucking spot monkey. Fuck Taker. 

[DavidB6937]

10 minutes ago, FlushFunk said:

The fact is if Undertaker wasn’t a Trump voter or hadn’t said he didn’t think video games had a place in the locker room nobody would be shitting on him.

Today’s talent is soft. That’s a true statement. Some prefer it. He doesn’t. And unfortunately for many his opinion holds a lot of weight & hurts because it hits home.

Yeah and if Chris Benoit hadn't killed his family we wouldn't shit on him either. But that's missing the point.

[Perry]

In a similar vein, most people used to shit on The Big Bang Theory because it ripped the piss out of nerds. In most cases you only had to click on the haters profiles on twitter and you'd see that they were gamers and geeks who were clearly offended. Most probably hadn't even watched an episode. At the end of the day the show ran for 12 seasons, they were obviously doing something right.