Falls Count Anywhere

02-21-08

I could be saying anything right now, really...

Tombstone: The Career of The Undertaker
I’ve watched a lot of wrestling DVDs, and the formula that seems to work for the WWE right now is to do an hour and a half documentary, throw on some special features like extra interviews and then toss in a disc full of matches that tell the rest of the stories. That’s what worked for the AWA DVD, and it was actually better when they did it with the Roddy Piper disc (which included a disc that was nothing but Piper’s Pit episodes).

With Tombstone, the WWE didn’t follow that formula, instead giving a 3 disc review of his career using the matches to tell the whole story with only brief interludes in between to set things up. There are pluses and minuses to that method.

First off, this is the story of The Undertaker, a wrestler who was born when he walked to the ring in 1990 along with Brother Love. They show part of that match, but that’s really the only history we get. We get nothing about Mark Calloway and his youth. We don’t get the story of how a couple of different trainers in Texas took him for a bunch of money and never trained him. They don’t even mention his time as Texas Red or Mean Mark Callous. Those things are what traditional WWE DVDs would do, but this did none of that.

There’s a reason for that, of course. The Undertaker is still a character who is on the air and the gimmick is such that giving away that he’s a guy playing a character could do some damage. But who still believes that? It’s like Fritz Von Erich in the 1970s. No one thought he was a Nazi by that point and he was being cheered. It didn’t ruin the character when he came on and said that he was Jack Adkisson. It would just be nice to get the whole story on the career, including his early days.

The matches on the first disc are some of the ones that made people love him, even when he was a heel. There was the classic Hogan match where he appeared to have won the World Title but they overturned it and then declared a rematch at Tuesday Night in Texas a few days later. The match wasn’t good, but it was historic. The second match was the famous Undertaker vs. Yokozuna match where every heel in the Fed at the time came out and beat UT down leading to him being put into the casket and then they did the Transcendence of the Undertaker angle that was truly stupid. I was there live, sitting a few rows above the entry ramp and I thought it was hilarious. They completely glossed over the bit where they had the fake Undertaker come onto the scene and Leslie Neilsen was involved in the Find The Undertaker angle.

WWE Tombstone - History of the Undertaker -- BUY IT HERE

They followed it up with an Undertaker vs. Diesel angle that I had forgotten about. It was the last WrestleMania match for Diesel and it was one of the slowest and most dull matches that year which also featured the classic Shawn Michael's vs. Bret Hart 60 minute Iron Man match. That was followed up with the debut of Mankind (aka Mick Foley) and they showed the attack which took place less than 24 hours after that Diesel match.

The Mankind vs. Undertaker feud did so much for both men. UT was already a major star, but it really did show that he was able to work when given the chance. Yeah, he’d had good matches with guys like Bret Hart, but here was a series of matches where he was more than keeping up with Mick. They chose the Buried Alive match from October 1996 to talk about their feud. I’d have chosen the Boiler Room Brawl from Summerslam 1996 as the match, but what are you gonna do? This was also the feud that made Mankind into the big star he would be for years.

Sure, this was a good match, pretty entertaining, but there were better matches between these two. The feud lasted for almost a year and they had a lot of choices to make. I’d have rather seen them use two different matches, maybe their first meeting followed by one of the gimmick matches.

This really was the most violent feud of the time in the WWF, showing definite influences from ECW, especially with them working in the crowd. Undertaker did a great running clothesline leaping over the guardrail into the ringside area. They show the Mankind-UT match that took place right after UT beat Sycho Sid for the Title at WrestleMania the 13th.

I often forget that Bret Hart and Undertaker had one of their best matches in 1997, while Hart was doing the "Canada is Best" stuff. This was the match where Shawn Michaels returned from having lost his smile and acted as the ref before hitting the Undertaker by accident and giving Hart the Title. This was a good match with some great stuff. Taker was always a bit slower and more deliberate with his matches against Hart, which actually allowed Bret to do his best work. This was the same show where Owen Hart piledrove Austin, breaking his neck. This led to the UT Michaels feud which was also one of the more bloody feuds of the WWF.

The second disc features the biggest matches in the Michaels vs. Undertaker feud. There was the Ground Zero match, which was really good, even though it had a nondescript finish, and then there was the Hell in a Cell.

Michaels, at that point in his career, was probably the greatest in-ring performer of the day. You had Misawa and Kobashi in Japan, and Guerrero and Benoit underneath in WCW, but no one in the US was as good at the top of the card as Michaels was. Everything he does is beautiful. He was the US Wrestler of the Year in 1996, but 1997 saw him work with Undertaker in a way that was just awesome. His back injury In 1998 really ended what was the greatest string of matches in the career of the Showstopper. I also forgot that this was a part of the return of Rick Rude to the WWF before he jumped to the WCW.

This was also the first run of DX, and the Hell in the Cell was the start of the big run of amazing violent matches that were really spectacles for their time. Since Austin was gone, this was what had to draw. The crowd had been down for the rest of the show too because of the death of Brian Pillman that day. Still, it was a great match and one of the three or four most important matches of the late 1990s (right up there with Austin vs. Hart at WrestleMania 13, Eddie Guerrero vs. Rey Misterio at Halloween Havoc 1997 and the Canadian Stampede main Event from July 1997). Michaels bumps like a Ping-Pong ball in the match and takes some incredible bumps to the floor. It’s a wonder he managed to make it as long as he did.

The rest of the second disc is good, though much of it is the first Kane feud. The Mick Foley vs. Undertaker Hell in a Cell where Foley got beat up so bad is on there. It’s a brutal spectacle to be sure. The Inferno match with Kane was a match that was more about the visual and it’s actually kinda boring as a wrestling match.

I thought that the third disc of the set had some of the best stuff. There’s a Hogan match which after Hogan had gone on to Legend status made it a better match. I had forgotten that he and Brock Lesnar had done a Hell in a Cell. The Stone Cold stuff was classic, even if everything that led up to it was kinda lame (remember the Stone Cold Crucifix?) and they showed the Austin First Blood match, which was a terrible choice when you had a dozen matches between the two that were far better.

The American Badass era came in during HHH’s reign in 1999. I remember that era very well and I have to say that this is the era that really made Undertaker. A lot of folks say that it was the Mick Foley matches in 2000 that made HHH, but the Undertaker feud really put him another notch up. I’d also add various wins over The Rock as another step up that ladder. The match was pretty good too. I remember watching this with Jordan Rosa, Joker and company at the old Cortez Gathering Place and we were all excited to see H do the job.

The Brock match was solid, as was the match against Vince McMahon. The Kurt Angle match is from 2003, and was probably the third best match these two had, with my personal fave being one from an episode of SmackDown! in 2005.

So, would I recommend the DVD set? Absolutely, especially since it’s on sale at a lot of outlets for 19.99. It’s a beautiful series of matches and even with the less than Ideal choices and the missing matches (like the later matches with Angle and any match with Benoit or Edge) the entire package just flat out works because it gives us so much of such an important career.

News and Notes
Chuck The Iceman Liddell was on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me as the Not My Job guy. He’s not that great a talker, but Peter Segal was pretty knowledgeable. They talked about UFC and NPR not having a similar demographic, though I certainly am in both.

There is word that Hogan and Eric Bischoff might be starting a wrestling promotion with network Television. The Network that they’ve talked with is NBC, according to the folks down south who mail me when such rumors hit the street, which is weird since NBC owns USA which runs RAW and was being talked about for SmackDown!. Hogan is on American Gladiators, which the network has been very happy with. I’m just happy to get to see Crush every week. The promotion would feature Hogan as the star with the name Goldberg coming up. Of course, it’s also WrestleMania time and that could just be another way for Hogan to get Vince’s attention.

Speaking of SmackDown!, there’s a lot of talk from all sides. The Observer talks a lot about MyNetworkTV, which is one of the weakest networks you could imagine. It would provide strong content for the network, but it’s also not available everywhere and long-term survival is a concern.

As far as Cable goes, and I think that would be a bad idea as they could draw far more people with a show on Network, there’s USA and SciFi. They’ve got an exclusive Cable deal with NBC Networks, so that limits things. There is talk from the television side that NBC has some interest in wrestling, but the Hogan thing might tag that. Fox’s interest isn’t that strong, but it’s known that feelers have been sent out. CBS wants to lower its median age and WWE would do that, but my guy at Zap2It says they haven’t even thought about it (though they were talking with an MMA group). ABC and Disney wouldn’t have it. There’s ION, but that’s weaker than MyNetwork.Going to WWE 24/7 would be an option, and there was talk that it would increase sales of the program available on Digital Cable, but the audience would certainly shrink and they’d have more problems selling ads and making money beyond the subscription rate. I would say watch the Fox front.

Johnny Weaver passed away this week. He was in his 70s. He was a Carolina Legend and probably best known for inventing the WeaverLock, a Sleeper that was used by Dusty Rhodes for a while. He was a really big star, but he was never a national level guy.

Mirko Cro Cop is out of UFC. They cut him and his huge contract after his two consecutive losses. He’s part of a new project in Japan that has deals with Emelianenko and maybe Couture. This should be interesting.

That’s all for this week!

Chris Garcia