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Okay folks, for 33 years Big Mark has entertained us, whether he stayed too long at the dance or not is irrelevant. This guy took a cartoon gimmick that should have been good for a three-month run and parlayed it into one of the most illustrious careers in professional wrestling. It looks like he's finally hung it up for good, and Godspeed to him, he has absolutely nothing left to prove in the wrestling world, without question, he's one of the greats. What are some of your favorite matches and memories?

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My favourite period of The Undertaker was during the Mankind feud in '96. He maintained the important aspects of the deadman gimmick, while then being able to have more compelling matches and move faster. Plus, he became far more vulnerable without going too far the other way and losing his bad ass aura. He wasn't cutting long promos at this point either, as he still had Bearer and then when Bearer turned on him, it wasn't too bad for a while. He had some great matches with Bret around this time too and it culminated with the Hell in a Cell match. The Kane rivalry was not my cup of tea.

The best guy in WWE history in both protecting AND evolving his gimmick.

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Yeah, the scooter angle was so funny. Then he had that novelty sized toy wrench he attacked Undertaker with. For some reason, Undertaker yelling "it's yo ass, boy!" while down and out after the wrench attack stuck with me and cracks me up. 

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3 minutes ago, Charlie M. said:

I need to go back and watch One Night Only '97 against Bret. I think it might still hold up as Taker's best pure wrestling match.

You'll get no argument from me on that. Maybe not his most dramatic match, but probably his best pure wrestling match. Mark could always wrestle, but the gimmick didn't call for him to do all that much, same deal as with Hogan; a formula was established, people liked it, why screw with success?

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The WM 25 match with HBK has got to be at the top of the list for me. Just an amazing match, with the jumping/"Eff You" Tombstone at the end of it. If I were to try to get someone into wrestling and could show them one match, that would probably be the one (with all the story buildup leading to it as well, of course).

The run with Mick Foley that was already mentioned was pretty great, too. People knew who Foley was prior to that, but Taker made him in the WWF/E.

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Have the Mania matches with Michaels negatively influenced both WWE main event style and fan expectations? Not everybody can mix the dramatic storytelling and body language (as much as it can be way too obvious at times with those two) with the finisher dancing and finisher kickouts. I wasn't watching much from 2006-2011, so I'm asking in earnest. Was that formula established prior to that with the HBK/Angle matches?

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4 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

The WM 25 match with HBK has got to be at the top of the list for me. Just an amazing match, with the jumping/"Eff You" Tombstone at the end of it. If I were to try to get someone into wrestling and could show them one match, that would probably be the one (with all the story buildup leading to it as well, of course).

The run with Mick Foley that was already mentioned was pretty great, too. People knew who Foley was prior to that, but Taker made him in the WWF/E.

I think Foley helped Taker a lot too, though. He helped give Taker that brawler edge and modernize the gimmick. Taker had started to become pretty dated in the mid-90's, IMO.

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In the 1990s, he was right in that sweet spot where he was willing to put people over, but every time he did, it really meant something.  Maybe it speaks more to the booking.  I don't know if people really remember this but Rock pinned him clean in a tag match on Raw, must have been somewhere around 1998, and I was like, "Wow, I guess they're really serious about taking Rock to the next level."

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I wasn't fond of the "American Badass" phase is comparison to the "Deadman", but I didn't hate it. I always thought that if Mark wasn't a wrestler, he'd be running a biker bar and beating the snot out of people who came in and acted a fool.

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For a brief period about 10 years ago, Taker was just about the best wrestler on the planet.  It didn't last long, because his body started giving out and he simply couldn't keep pace with the full time schedule.  But he found the sweet spot where he mixed the Deadman gimmick with his wannabe-MMA fighter schtick, and was doing really great work.

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Matt:

You're spot on with that comment. It didn't last long, because he was already breaking down, but my God if he'd found that sweet spot ten years earlier he'd be a legend for entirely different reasons. We'd be talking about the best big man in the history of wrestling. In that short period, he was doing better work than Terry Gordy ever did and I don't give that up easily.

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If it weren't for The Undertaker and Paul Bearer, I wouldn't be where I am today. When I saw him at the 1990 Survivor Series, I was fascinated. I didn't know what an undertaker was, but he looked scary and cool as hell. From that point on, I did my research of what the profession entailed and knew I wanted to be a funeral director. Nobody really uses the term undertaker or mortician anymore, but I digress. The matches weren't very good, but his original western mortician look is still my favorite. Ministry Undertaker was my second favorite incarnation of the dead man.

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The initial Kane feud has a special place in my heart since it's when I started watching weekly even if the matches weren't too great. Every time he worked with Shawn it was magic for me. The Streak matches from Manias 21-29 were mostly showstealers, and I admit I still enjoyed old man Taker from the more recent Brock matches. 

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Not sure why I didn't think of this when I did my initial post, but Taker did have a memorable moment at one of the few WWF/E events I've attended live.

My wife and I made the drive to Atlanta for the Royal Rumble in 2002. The big story was the return of HHH, not surprisingly, but Taker got into the Rumble fairly early on. He looked like he was rolling. . .until freaking Maven drop kicked him from behind and sent him out. The entire arena was like, "Are you shitting me?"

Taker proceeded to get his hands on Maven and beat the shit out of that young man all over the Phillips Arena, all the way back to the concession stands. We got to see it on the big screens that were in the arena, and I was paying pretty much zero attention to the match at that point.

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Went with some friends to a WWF show that turned out to be a TV taping. This was back when they'd do a whole month of syndicated shows in one night. The Mountie was a fairly new heel then, and we had to sit through two squash matches and a promo for, each in what felt like separate hours of the taping. "He comes out here one more time, I'm running in there with my chair.," says one of my friends after one of those appearances. Now, up till then I'd just been going to NWA house shows, ones with mostly competitive matches, so the sheer length of this show and the number of squashes surprised me.

The Mountie came out one more time. He had the whole crowd hating him. No pop for him or any pat of his gimmick, not even his music, just what folks might now call go away heat.

And then we heard the gong.

And the place went bonkers.

Undertaker. The one guy who everyone in the building knew would shut the Mountie up was on his way to the ring. Didn't matter that "rasslin' is fake" here. Predetermined finishes? Dang right we knew how this one was ending, and we were happy about it.

One Tombstone Later...no kickout at 2...the match was over. We went bonkers all over again.

So, thanks for that Taker. So what if last night you weren't the dude that could, in storyline fantasyland terms, beat anyone on the planet? You have been that dude for hundreds, nay, thousands of nights. And I'm just one of millions who enjoyed at least one of them.

 

 

 

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House show in Seattle. Main event was Taker/Austin vs Owen/Bulldog. Hell of a match. At one point Owen does one of his taunts, raising his arms and whatnot. He gets hit flush on the nose with a large soda and is absolutely drenched. Austin starts belly laughing, I look over at Taker and you can tell he's barely holding it in. Got his hair over his face, shoulders slightly moving up and down. Only time I can remember ever seeing him get that close to breaking character. 

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