BikerTaker for Hall of Shame?
By Scott Keith on March 5, 2022
Undertaker's “American Badass” persona wasn't exactly popular with smarks, particularly in the months following his return in 2000, where he was no-selling at a level comparable to his initial 1990/91 character, and was gobbling up his opponents in the ring
in general. That he was frequently doing this against the talented (and popular with the IWC) new blood made it even more galling. My question is, how much of this character was a matter of booking and how much of it was Taker's ego in refusing to sell or
give smaller wrestlers any kind of shine? Something changed during his hiatus, since even in his Ministry/Corporate Ministry phase, he sold quite a bit for people like Ken Shamrock.
in general. That he was frequently doing this against the talented (and popular with the IWC) new blood made it even more galling. My question is, how much of this character was a matter of booking and how much of it was Taker's ego in refusing to sell or
give smaller wrestlers any kind of shine? Something changed during his hiatus, since even in his Ministry/Corporate Ministry phase, he sold quite a bit for people like Ken Shamrock.
PS. While I'm here: his initial pairing with Brother Love always struck me as strange, as a smarmy televangelist huckster and a creepy, undead mortician didn't seem like the most intuitive match (I guess they thought so too, given how quickly they switched
to Paul Bearer). This was during one of the periods where I wasn't watching the TV very frequently, so did they ever “justify” this?
Yeah Taker got to be a bit much during that period, mostly because Austin and Rock were gone and it was somehow put on himself and HHH to “lead the locker room” and be the big stars in their absence. And it didn't work out very well.
And no, the Brother Love thing was never really explained in any detail on TV. And yeah, it was always a weird pairing.
Comments are disable in preview.