The Undertaker has been a staple of the WWE for the last 30 years. Whether as The Deadman or The American Badass, The Undertaker has been a vital part of WWE programming and lore. No doubt he will go into WWE’s Hall of Fame and recognized for his achievements and accomplishments.
However, one of the biggest moments of his career was indeed the transition from The Deadman to The American Badass back in May of 2000. The fans had already been used to Undertaker in his initial persona for so long, he wasn’t sure if fans would accept the change in character. Speaking with Extraa Dhamaal, Undertaker talks about how he felt about the transition and how it would change the perception of him the fans had.
“It was extremely nerve racking because I didn’t know how the audience would accept it. I felt like I needed to make that change for a little while. One, just to freshen myself up a little bit. Two, when I made this move you had guys like The Rock and you had Stone Cold and all these guys that cut these promos. There was, I think the word I used best was, I was kinda shackled with what I could do.”
“I couldn’t compete on the mic without being able to lift some of the veil off the character a little bit always knowing that I wanted to go back but I needed to step out of it, kinda exhale and it shows some different things that the original Undertaker couldn’t really do that made sense to the characters. So it kind of took all those chains off of me and freed me up to do all the things I wanted to do athletically and some of the promos I wanted to cut and kind of be that American Bad Ass guy.”
Undertaker eventually reverted to a new variation of The Deadman, taking elements of both characters eventually to create the on air character we see now. And now, with his Final Farewell coming at Survivor Series, we can look back on the many ways he evolved from his initial debut to become The Deadman we have seen in recent years.
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