The fact that to ride a motorcycle down a ramp and around a tight circle meant it just had to slowly putter like a Rascal scooter really undercut a lot of the badassedness to me. And then he would scare people by revving the engine. Ooh. The guy went from indestructible zombie to dude who hangs out at a bar in Johnsburg.

The ever-evolving Undertaker thing was pretty odd. It was fairly obvious early on that the whole gimmick was kinda not gonna work as the image of the WWF changed. I distinctly remember around WM13, when you had Bret Hart and Steve Austin swearing at each other and the NWO breaking shit on the other show and ECW tapes circulating among the kids, being like "seriously? They're really gonna go with the Undertaker? Oookaaay," and generally fearing for the very life of the WWF, as we really sorta had to do in that time period.

And yet everything they tried to do to update him -- attempted brother-murderer, pleather-clad Satanist, biker dude, judo enthusiast -- ended up being so preposterous, especially as one failed gimmick built upon another, that they really would have been better off just keeping him as a dead guy all along. I think they finally figured it out by WM20, where they sort of refashioned him into kind of a self-aware standard-bearer of Larger-Than-Life Pro Wrestling Pageantry, but stripping the guy down to just being a big boring guy was a giant waste of time.

If anyone remembers when he tag-teamed with the Big Show, which I believe was kind of in between his PVC-pants era and denim-shirt era, I was actually at the Raw where he cut that all-time terrible promo about being stranded in Death Valley with the Big Show and their motorcycles and having to eat snakes and live off their wits. Everyone in my section was kind of looking at one another and saying "where the hell is he going with this," and then Chris Jericho came out and basically said "where the hell are you going with this," and we were all terribly appreciative of Chris Jericho that night.

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It was that or the Big Evil version. Right around 2000.

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What the fuck is wrong with hanging out in a bar in Johnsburg?
Dick.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Undertaker = Easily the most boring and overrated wrestler in the last 30 years.

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Sounds even better on halloween in costume.