The tolling bell in wrestling is an ill omen for surely for all who hear it death and destruction
await?
This grim herald signals the arrival of a creature of myth, legend, infamy - shuffling
to the stage, draped in black, creeping fog billowing behind and flanked by crackling
bolts of lightning.
Whoever is in the ring looks into the face of death himself.
The Undertaker has been digging holes and claiming souls for 30 years now, after debuting
at Survivor Series in 1990.
In that time he has gone through many metamorphoses: from wrestler AND mortician with first day
at BIG school tie-vibes, to resurrected revenant out for revenge, a dark preacher who swayed
soothsayers, acolytes and bound bloodsucking vampires to his cause, a bit of a wobble after
that, get you some stabilisers on that bike Taker, and then back to the big hats, dark
coats and air of mystery as he became a living legend in the business.
But what is it about this dark lord that has seen his influence spread throughout all of
wrestling, how did the character endure an era in which gimmicks were dying out left,
right and centre and why is Mark Calaway’s eye-rolling, bell-tolling, soul-owning alter-ego
one of wrestling’s gods.
I’m Laurie hailing from partsFUNknown and this is The Undertaker Explained
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As befitting a creature that is risen from the grave, The Undertaker has gone through
many reincarnations during his 30 years in WWE.
After a two year stint at WCW where he went by the name ‘Mean’ Mark Callous, he made
his ominous debut at Survivor Series in 1990 as the final member of Ted DiBiase’s Million
Dollar Team and made an instant impression with his pale face, methodical movement and
towering size.
“Look at the size of that ham-hock.”
The character was an idea that Vince McMahon had suggested, but they hadn’t found the
right person to portray it until they found Mark.
He was originally known as Kane the Undertaker, but in classic WWE fashion that first name
was dropped, they were saving that for something else. Mysteries.
Decked out in a black stetson with a grey band around it, leather gloves and spats,
draped in a long black overcoat and his face a grim mask that concealed a barely restrained
rage. He was a movie monster brought to life.
A fact that Taker himself has recently talked about with Steve Austin on Broken Skull Sessions:
"As I thought more about the character and what I could do athletically my presentation
became, ‘I wanna lull people in, I wanna stalk somebody when I get ’em hurt. I want
people to feel like the Boogeyman is gonna come down the hallway and grab ya, right?’
That’s what I was trying and honestly, I don’t know why, but it clicked. Michael
Myers and Jason Voorhees and Friday The 13th I wanted to be like those guys were like those
guys never moved fast at all, but they always seemed to be at the right place when it was
time to cut somebody’s throat.”
The stalk and slay of Halloween & Friday the 13th is something that has inspired quite
a few wrestling characters over the years, Bray Wyatt’s Fiend has teefed a few tropes
for his demonic passenger, which you can find out all about in the episode of Explained
up there.
A fascination with the macabre was pretty popular in the US at the time as the Addams
Family rose to prominence again with Hollywood movies in 1991 and ‘93.
And when Brother Love handed Taker over to the care of new manager Paul Bearer he got
his own Uncle Festus. Taker I guess being the lumbering Lurch in this case.
In Taker’s case, the slower pace of a Jason, Michael Myers or even Lurch didn’t exactly
wow the crowds in the early part of his career - but it was his presence, his way of doing
nothing that made him a must-see wrestler.
Announced by a tolling bell and an organ playing the funeral march, one look at the sallow
eyes peeking out from beneath the brim of his stetson was enough to cast a chill over
a crowd.
This unstoppable monster angle was something management wanted to play up, and a year after
his debut Taker beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF Title at Survivor Series. With a little help
from Ric Flair.
What I think is most fascinating about this first incarnation was that he was actually
an Undertaker by trade, listen to this.
Then we’re going to pick them up and put them in the carriage and then drive them to
the chapel, get a little wreath that says Sally, hand a tissue to grandma.
This era of Taker has come to be known as the Western Mortician - because he is an Old
West Undertaker.
Which is a role that rose to prominence in the 1800s as American towns in the west were
being settled and the relatively new technology of preserving bodies so loved ones could come
and say their last goodbyes became commonplace.
It was also a vital role as the average life expectancy was just 37 years of age and as
Roger McGrath, author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes said:
"It was a very harsh environment, with scorching deserts and dehydration,"
But perhaps the most lovely twist is that most wrestling gimmicks involved being a job
and a wrestler, Mark Calloway was an undertaker and a wrestler, but Western Undertaker’s
were often undertakers and furniture salesmen.
Why? Because they’re the ones with the tools and skills to make coffins. Something Taker
would bring into his gimmick.
He would also revisit the Old West for inspiration later in his career taking on the roles of
The Last Outlaw and The Gunslinger.
“I get it, you're the aging gunslinger with just a few bullets left in your gun and you
can shoot it out with anybody in the locker room but Undertaker, you can't shoot with
Brock Lesnar!” - Heyman
lFrom 2008 to WrestleMania 33 in 2017 Taker’s character took on a Clint Eastwood glint,
which began as people as people referred to him as the Last Outlaw and he put old enemies
like Triple H and Shawn Michaels to bed.
But shifted into this roaming gunslinger character who would appear on the horizon as WrestleMania
season rolled in - like the Man With No Name from Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti
Westerns.
Or Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which inspired Leone, becoming a ronin, a masterless samurai
who doles out his own form of unorthodox justice adhering to a mystifying moral code.
I prefer the western comparison though because not only was Taker the toughest guy in town
helping others to grow their legend through these intense standoffs.
But he was also underneath the eyeliner and the pleather: a slice of Americana, look at
the Badass character which was obviously an attempt to hew closer to the real Mr Calloway
and came out as this sort of semi-authentic American man from Texas at least passed through
a pop-culture prism.
Whereas the gunslinger was all about American myth making:
Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture
said that “ The western has always been the American epic. It’s exciting and violent
and huge. Wt.”
Maybe wrestling is that story too: it’s exciting, violent and huge.
Richard Aquila, the author of Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Culture
said: “The western is flexible, that’s why it's
alive still,” and that classic westerns “celebrated American exceptionalism”.
So the Undertaker’s story is a western. Here is this mysterious old timer who refuses
to die and rides into town on his hog to put the upstart youth in their place before disappearing
off into the desert again.
And what could be more American exceptional than a 6ft 10 inch tall man who defies all
the pundits by putting on some of the best matches of his career at an age when others
would be retired from the game.
And then still doing matches even when the returns were diminishing to say the least,
you can’t win all the comparisons.
But the myth of the old west is not the only one Taker drew on throughout his career, you
all know that, I’m obviously going to talk about all the supernatural stuff.
Because he died didn’t he?
All the way back at 1994’s Royal Rumble, Yokozuna sealed him inside a casket and that
was the end of the Undertaker.
He disappeared from the WWF for 7 months, in reality to recover from a back injury,
but in kayfabe to claw his way out of his own coffin, bloody hands grasping for purchase
in the mud of his grave site as he coughs up wads of dirt, desperately gulping in air,
lungs heaving, but suddenly the realisation you can’t feel the cool air rasp across
the back of your throat, you can’t feel your lungs full to bursting, you can’t feel
anything. I’ve read to much into that. He was a deadman.
Deadman Taker swapped grey for purple, but was only really the first step stone on a
staircase that went straight down.
Because soon it was out with the purple and in with the black and the buckles like he’d
just discovered the music of HIM.
1996 marked the true turn to the darkside for Taker who donned druidic gear, employed
malign magics and developed a true flair for the theatrical.
Often shocking opponents with his supernatural trickery like summoning lightning, or casting
fireballs by pointing his finger, you know, proper magic.
And this was when WWE really doubled down on the pseudo-Satanic religious imagery: it’s
the dark rituals and the pentagrams, it’s crucifying Steve Austin, sacrifices, marriages
which look like sacrifices, it’s forming the Ministry of Darkness and proclaiming himself
to be the Lord of Darkness. All pretty standard beelzebobbins, but it
was a load of fun throughout the Attitude Era and had the true heights of the feud with
a certain long-lost half-brother, we all know who it is, we set it up earlier in the video,
say it with me, 1,2,3 Kanye… I’ve read that wrong, Kane.
This was dripping in religious significance and foreshadowing, as a certain other Cain
also had jealousy issues when it came to his brother and we know how that went.
Personally, though I love this stuff and 10 year old me absolutely lapped it up, it wears
its influences so plainly you don’t massively need me to Explain anything about it.
What I think is much more interesting is when these magical and mystical parts of the character
met the Deadman character with an old west swagger and a splash of Badass sprinkled in
there too, so we could get to know the man beneath the hat.
And Taker has kind of been this character since 2004 - flitting in and out, cherry picking
the best bits of everything that came before to become one amalgamation of Undertaker.
He became the embodiment of the myth of the Undertaker.
A wrestling god who can inhabit different aspects, much like the The Morrigan of Irish
mythology, who is either a phantom queen or trio of sisters depending on who you ask.
The Unholy Trinity he brought up in the feud with AJ Styles ahead of the Bone Yard makes
this triple deity explicit.
A character who, like in myth works in cycles. Is it Zeus or Jupiter who is king of your
pantheon, is it Kane or Randy Orton lighting the casket on fire this time? Taker even turns
up once a freaking year for wrestling Xmas.
French literary theorist Roland Barthes in his essay The World of Wrestling said that:
“American wrestling represents a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil.”
Barthes studied semiotics or the interpretation of signs, anything that communicates a meaning,
and he said that the objects that are these signs become ‘myths’.
For wrestling he said: “Each sign in wrestling is endowed with an absolute clarity, since
one must always understand everything on the spot. t”
The signs here being Ric Flair’s lavish but effeminate robe, suggesting he is rich,
probably stuck up, and sadly in the case of effeminate items in wrestling, probably the
bad guy. Or the way The Undertaker looms and leers from beneath the rim of black hat which
tells you he is dangerous, mysterious and connected to some dark power.
Barthes even compared wrestlers to gods, saying:
“When the hero or villain of the drama, the man who was seen a few minutes earlier
possessed by moral rage, magnified into a sort of metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling
hall, impassive, anonymous, carrying a small suitcase and arm-in-arm with his wife, no
one can doubt that wrestling holds that power of transmutation which is common to the Spectacle
and to Religious Worship. In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy,
wrestlers remain gods because they are, t”
And there’s a bit more grey area around the Undertaker, who now seems neither good
nor evil and is instead a force of nature inflicting his own form of justice on the
roster.
The Undertaker works in mysterious ways.
And perhaps even more than Barthes expected a performer to, Taker throughout his career
has embodied that wrestling god, because until recently there was no him carrying a small
suitcase, arm-in-arm with his wife. He slept in a grave as far as we knew because he lived
and breathed the gimmick.
Like he told Stone Cold:
“I lived it because I knew I couldn’t be different than what they saw on TV. I never
stopped working.” “ I never tried to put myself in situations,
where I had to be anything other than what people saw on TV. They got a slight variation
because I was in street clothes, but they never got much more than that. I think it
worked.”
It more than bloody worked - for years the Undertaker was a creation that belonged purely
to wrestling, a perfect bundle of signs, a phenom, a legend, something we could understand
but nev er fully comprehend.
And it’s not just about not knowing that he REALLY likes tigers, it’s not knowing
anything that could’ve made him human, something mundane that would have taken the shine off
this wrestling demi-god.
Barthes said: "t"
And I doubt there are many people in the history of wrestling who we expected more from, and
who rose, from the grave, time and time again to meet it.
------------------------------------ cv
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So thanks again for watching, if you’re new to Explained or just looking for something
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one on green mist and its mystical origins. Until next time, jam that jam.