No introduction necessary. It’s WrestleMania week, so we’re gonna look back at every Undertaker entrance and rank them based on … well, we’re not quite sure, but we’re gonna figure it out.
Let us know your favorite from the list, and why you think we should put exploding coffins in front of floating, or whatever.
23. WrestleMania XIX
I’m putting this in last place, but the secret is that the entire list is upside down and this is the greatest Undertaker entrance ever. If you ever wanted to destroy the Deadman’s mystique, show someone this clip of him bro’ing it up with Fred Durst at WrestleMania XIX.
It’s so bad it’s good. It’s Limp Bizkit, complete with a phalanx of 2003’s best Fred Durst Lady Dancers, performing ‘Rollin” while The Undertaker rides to the ring on a motorcycle CARRYING A UNITED STATES FLAG. All it needs is flashing lights on the TitanTron reading “POST 9-11” and an eagle swooping down to award a championship.
22. WrestleMania VIII
There was once a time when The Undertaker was Just Another Guy, and even though he was a zombie mortician’s assistant wizard (?), his entrances were just simple and scary. Spooky music and low angles, but no druid armies and fireballs and lightning hazards.
The entrance from WrestleMania VIII ranks slightly lower than his first entrance at VII thanks to that colorful rainbow entrance area. Cthulhu could enter from under that thing and you’d think he was adorable.
21. WrestleMania VII
https://dailymotion.com/video/x2lrcre
What Undertaker’s first WrestleMania entrance lacks in pageantry, it makes up for in shots of terrified children. Kids have started treating Undertaker like Santa Claus, but back in the day he could put the fear of God into people by reminding them that not only would they one day die, it would probably be at his hands.
Paul Bearer basically being the goth Church Lady really brings it home.
20. WrestleMania 31
There’s nothing more underwhelming to an Undertaker entrance than it happening in the daytime. At Mania 31, both Taker and Bray Wyatt’s entrances were nerfed by natural lighting. Imagine how much scarier Bray Wyatt leading a gang of threatening scarecrows to the ring via lantern would’ve been if it hadn’t been sunny and clear?
Undertaker’s entrance has smoke and fire and all the cool accoutrements, but it just doesn’t work. When he’s “raising the house lights,” it looks like he’s scrolling through Instagram filters.
19. WrestleMania X-8
https://dailymotion.com/video/x2efb7k
The ‘Rollin” entrance gets a little better without Durst dancing in place and screaming at me to tell him what I want to do now, but it’s still very singularly Not Undertaker. I’m honestly kinda sad we never did a true biker/zombie cowboy mashup and had a full-on Ministry of Darkness Undertaker riding a Ghost Rider bike to the ring through a field of fire-wielding druids.
Anyway, this one ranks slightly behind the X-7 entrance because it was the second one, and because that “giant man speeding down a ramp on a motorcycle in a crowded arena” works best the first time you see it. MOVE IN, NOW MOVE OUT~!
18. WrestleMania X-7
https://dailymotion.com/video/x37wmwo
Limp Bizkit, or a live Motorhead performance where Lemmy doesn’t know the words? Who ya got?
The WrestleMania X-7 entrance leading directly into the best of the three Triple H/Undertaker Mania showdowns — like, directly into it — is probably the best of the Biker Taker entrances in a non-ironic sense. It’s still a guy riding to the ring listening to Limp Bizkit, but it’s as cool as you can possibly make that.
17. WrestleMania XII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNNvfrwt3so
The mid-90s were a confusing time for the Undertaker, because despite being the most theatrically-reliant character in the company, he was always getting overshadowed in the pyro department. They were just like, “purple lights, smoke, that’s it, you got it.”
Here, before his match with Diesel, Undertaker at least gets some NXT Championship match lighting to give his entrance a little more pop. I guess to kayfabe explain it, Taker had to get as much threat mileage as possible out of simply being the Undertaker before adding spiked suits of armor, wings and walls of fire.
16. WrestleMania 13
https://dailymotion.com/video/xylbph
Speaking of not having enough pyro love, here’s the Undertaker getting overshadowed by Sycho Sid. By SID.
Even an uneventful Undertaker entrance is pretty good, so we’re sticking this in the middle somewhere. If you haven’t been impressed by the content of the list so far, don’t worry, we’re done with the motorcycles and the New Generation (save one major exception) so it’s nothing but fireballs and lightning bolts from here on out.
15. WrestleMania XV
Taker’s look here was as cool as the match was bad, which is saying something.
14. WrestleMania 24
https://dailymotion.com/video/x2ltsvq
One of the most beautiful sets and fireworks arrangements in WrestleMania history, the Undertaker’s main-event entrance at WrestleMania 24 gains all the aesthetic points available and then loses a bunch for his celebration injuring 45 people.
13. WrestleMania XI
You know how you associate The Undertaker with purple? That starts here. As any fan worth their salt knows, only fake Undertakers wear black and grey.
12. WrestleMania 22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFOTfMaYQmk
Remember last year when Bray Wyatt kidnapped the Undertaker and Kane and “harvested their souls?” You thought he’d stolen their supernatural powers, but he only stole a week’s worth of lightning powers.
Here’s the best-ever use of those same lightning powers, before Taker’s very underrated casket match with Mark Henry at WrestleMania 22. The lightning catches the Peter Gabriel ‘Big Time’-themed set on fire, and if you ever want to hear the most absurd sentence about pro wrestling available, there’s the first third of this one.
11. WrestleMania 23
The Mark Henry casket match at 22 and the Batista match at 23 are two of the most underrated WrestleMania matches ever, and definitely two of Taker’s most underrated. They were the ramping up that let Taker have those forever-classics with Shawn Michaels in the mid-20s. He’d come a long way from slumming it with King Kong Bundy.
The 23 entrance is maybe the most fire-heavy — thanks for curbing that upward momentum, 24 — and is still one of his most visually impressive. I love the backlighting during the beginning of the entrance. They’ve never utilized that effect like they could’ve. So much fire, though.
Feel free to watch all these entrances in a row and count how many times you say to yourself, “shut up, Michael Cole, I’m trying to enjoy this.”
10. WrestleMania XXVII
Two truths: one, Triple H entering to Metallica and Undertaker entering to Johnny Cash is one of the most undisputedly cool things WWE’s ever attempted at a WrestleMania. It’s still pitch-perfect and absolutely chilling, and at least twice as cool as either of the H vs. Undertaker late-20s WrestleMania matches. Truth two: thanks to horrible WWE revisionist editing, it never happened. Triple H entered to his regular theme, and Undertaker entered to his. There was just a cabin in the background, for some reason?
So yeah, the real version is cool enough to crack the top 10, but hurt enough by the editing to knock it down this far. Don’t use the music unless you’re gonna let it be a part of your history, guys, this sh*t is important to us.
9. WrestleMania XXV
8. WrestleMania XXVI
This one’s a two-parter.
Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker may have had, arguably, two of the best matches in WrestleMania history. They also had them in back to back years, so of course the entrances had to coordinate.
Shawn ended up in a white suit, the ultimate representation of all that’s good in the world. He descended from the ceiling. The Undertaker was the devil, and rose up from underneath. It was a little (incredibly obvious, but wonderful) touch that said everything you needed to know about these guys before they stepped into the ring.
7. WrestleMania XXVIII
End of an Era (that didn’t actually end any era, in any definition) Undertaker is all about the entrance cloak. Look at that thing. This guy’s dressed as a bat, the devil, a zombie mortician and a million other things, but he’s at his coolest as a royal blue Super Shredder from the depths of hell. Also, he causes a stadium-sized circle of fireworks.
My only complaint are the baggy hood (to hide his haircut, and accidentally made him look like a Satanically obsessed AJ Styles) and the fact that he didn’t wear the coat during the match and just cut people up with it.
6. WrestleMania XIV
https://dailymotion.com/video/x2y87f
Try not to mark out for a wrestling entrance that begins with ‘O Fortuna.’ Try.
Now try not to mark out for a guy entering to ‘O Fortuna’ wearing a Dracula cape with a dramatic collar. I’ve seen a lot of Undertaker entrances in my day, but this is the one I went back and watched to compile this list and went, “sh*t, this is awesome.” Probably the definitive scary ’90s Taker WrestleMania entrance, and one of those defining Attitude Era moments that’re just full of crowds going REEAARGGHHH the entire time.
5. WrestleMania XXX
Amazingly, an entrance involving a history of the Undertaker’s WrestleMania dominance and a bunch of clearly labeled coffins ends up being a foreshadowed goodbye to the streak.
It’s easy to forget literally everything about this match other than the finish, but the intro was legitimately one of the coolest things Taker had done to date. You’ve got to love that WWE created a hero monster who collects memorabilia coffins of guys he’s beaten at a specific event and it comes across as awesome.
4. WrestleMania 21
Watching this again, it might be too low.
To prepare for his match with Randy Orton, the Undertaker FLEW TO THE RING. Well, he levitated. Hovered? The guy isn’t walking, but he’s making to the ring, that’s what I’m getting at. I think the only thing that could make Undertaker more physically frightening is learning he doesn’t have to walk to kill you. Even when he had wings, it was more of a downward descent situation.
3. WrestleMania XXIX
The best single image of an Undertaker entrance, for me at least, is the Kratos-style STARVING DENIZENS OF HELL intro before his match with CM Punk at WrestleMania XXIX. Look at that. It’s still enough to take your breath away, years later.
2. WrestleMania IX
The coolest of the old school intros, this might’ve been the moment when WWE first realized they could give Undertaker spooky accessories (besides the urn) and make his Mania entrances special. This one’s got a vulture — a f*cking vulture — and is so cool that it almost makes you forget Taker’s riding to the ring to face an 8-foot tall naked man with airbrushed muscles.
1. WrestleMania XX
In my opinion, still the very best.
At WrestleMania XX, we got the return of the Deadman. He was a little different from before, cowboy’d out from his time on the bike, but it was everything we’d liked about him and missed. He was supernaturally intimidating again, not “walking down the street” intimidating. The music was back. The smoke, the fire, the lights. Even the opponent was correct. It’s maybe the perfect Undertaker moment, the entrance that created the post-20 aesthetic, expectations and vibe. It’s exactly right.
