The Undertaker has been in semi-retirement since 2010, wrestling in 19 matches over the past eight years, most all of which have been at WrestleMania or other major PPV events.
Even so, Taker remains one of the most beloved superstars in all of WWE, and the pop from a crowd when the bell tolls and the lights go out is about as loud as any reaction anyone on the roster gets. His character is as beloved and effective a gimmick as there’s ever been, and he believes that’s the most important thing in wrestling, not what kind of moves you can do.
Mark Calloway sat down in an out of character interview recently with Ed Young, the pastor of Fellowship Church, for a video series called ‘Wrastlin’ about wrestling and the bible, and discussed the need for a strong character over a strong move set, which is something he believes today’s uber-athletic stars have to learn (around the 6:00 mark of the below video).
“I’m a firm believer in less is more, especially with my character. When I talk to young guys, they think, OK well I can do — and athletes today are off the chart and just ridiculous how athletically talented the men and women are, for that matter. See, wrestling and sports entertainment, it’s not about the moves. It really isn’t. It’s being able to evoke emotion in one facet or the other. You have to make people love you, or you have to make them hate you. Either way, it doesn’t matter really, which one. Certain people like to be hated and others like to be loved, but if you can’t bring that emotion out of the audience, you’re not going to have them for long.
“And a lot of times what happens with these young guys is they’re so athletic and so gifted, they’ll do some kind of crazy double backflip off the top rope and land on somebody on the floor and then that’s what the audience takes away from it. This guy does crazy stuff. Well, you can only see that so many times before you’re like, I’ve seen that, I need something new. Well that’s a double backflip double-gainer onto somebody, how do I up that? That’s the position they sometimes back themselves into. They have to keep upping the ante and by doing that you increase your potential for injuries and catastrophic injuries like that.
“So characters, I keep looking back, like The Rock, Cena, and Flair, they had the ability to make you love them or make you hate them. And Cena is such an anomaly because you don’t know one night or the next whether they’re going to go ballistically crazy for him or boo him out of the building. He’s probably the most polarizing guy that’s come along in such a long time. His fan base is just crazy. But what happens is he sells tickets. He performs in front of full arenas, just like The Rock. But that’s the key, we tell stories. We use the wrestling moves to tell the story, but it boils down to the character and being able to bring that emotion out of your audience.”
It’s not a new take that character is the most important thing, and The Undertaker might be one of the best examples of that. His gimmick is so over that he doesn’t have to be a master in-ring technician, and the work in the ring he does just needs to back that up and advance the story.
There are a lot of wrestlers today that are leaps and bounds above former legends when it comes to what they can do in the ring, but Taker has a good point that in a business where you have to keep looking for ways to stay fresh, that brings in some inherent risks. Finding ways to advance your character are easier than finding ways to one-up yourself in athletic feats, which can often bring an increased risk of major injury.
