The Undertaker Sucks (Wind Against Triple H)
The Undertaker Sucks (Wind Against Triple H)
Sympathy for the Deadman.
I recently had an occasion to talk to a wrestler about the idea of going out on one’s own terms and have been thinking about that concept ever since.
As a fan and as a critic, I want (and frankly need) to believe that there is an artistic integrity to wrestling, that even at its most craven (WWE) wrestlers have a sense of honor about their craft, especially if they reach a certain level, if they have a legacy to protect.
Most of wrestling history exists to disprove this romantic notion. Hulk Hogan is threatening another match. Ric Flair wrestled his “final” final match until he convinces someone to let him have another. Atsushi Onita returned from retirement so many times he was called Mr. Liar. Mick Foley has whole books about how his penchant for coming out of retirement had ever-diminishing returns. We romanticize Terry Funk’s unwillingness to adhere to his various promises to retire and are right to do so, but we also joke about it. All of these men would, I’m sure, have loved to go out on a banger. I am also pretty sure they loved cashing in the checks they got for the good fortune of having names they’d built into a functional annuity, something they could make a living off of doing signings and appearances and podcasts, let alone the salad years where they maybe got a month or two on television, a featured match on PPV. Is not walking out of the arena and into the arms of the night with several thousand dollars earned on one’s reputation the platonic ideal of “going out on one’s own terms?”
It’s a shame, then, that when it comes to Triple H and The Undertaker, their in-ring reputations are entirely built on the fact that they never went away. With virtually every single principal character from the era they flew to Melbourne, Australia to end for the second time (including their seconds, Shawn Michaels and Kane), long retired, Paul Levesque and Mark Calloway, who combined account for maybe three years where either of them should have been the man and about twenty where it should have been literally anybody else, became the in-ring avatars of a time when things were better, the protectors and stewards of World Wrestling Entertainment, simultaneously grinding their vaunted “story that never ends” to a halt with interminable 15 minute promos on Raw that were either about “This business” in Hunter’s case or trying not to look arthritic while doing what Michael Cole calls “the iconic throat slash” in the case of The Undertaker and smashing the “make millions of dollars” button for a promotion that’d entered an era of stadium megashows without a proper Austin/Rock/Hogan/Cena level draw.
This ends, of course, two ways: with Triple H ending his in-ring career after a heart attack, and with The Undertaker thanking AJ Styles for getting something salvageable from him in a pre-taped match filmed on a closed set with the benefit of multiple takes, trick camera angles, and smoke machines, let alone one of the most objectively talented wrestlers of his generation. At the risk of sounding cruel in the face of age and medical emergency, I’ll say this: both ends spared them — and us — from more horseshit like match, where, in front of a throng of people in their exaggerated thousands, The Undertaker sucked wind so hard, so loud, that it’s a wonder that the “touching” story of Vince McMahon riding in an ambulance with him to the hospital after an in-ring injury comes from WrestleMania XXX, four years earlier, and not Super Show-Down.
Every single thing about this match is designed to obfuscate the fact that one of its principals can’t go. Between Michaels, Kane, Triple H, and the Undertaker’s entrances, the bombastic “THIS MATCH IS FOR THE LAST TIME EVER” ring announcement, and aforementioned iconic throat slash, you get a good 13 minutes to contemplate the state of the Undertaker’s hair. Hunter’s strategy is a classic one, the smaller, better conditioned athlete goading his larger, slower opponent into throwing soupbones that miss, tiring him out as if this were a Sting/Vader match filmed for the benefit of the very worst wrestling fans residing in hell. Michaels and Kane both get on the apron to confer with their comrades, two minutes in, while Michael Cole recaps Michaels’ comments about Triple H having more in the tank. Fans who’ve paid hundreds of Australian dollars for the privilege of sitting in plastic lawn chairs chant “THIS IS AWESOME,” making a little moment for themselves.
It’s good that they do, because as the double ropewalk fakeout sequence — Taker being denied one after hobbling up to the second rope, then him goozling Hunter while he’s climbing to the top and, instead of chokeslamming him, throwing him back into the corner for some of the Best Pure Strikes in the History of the WWE — Michaels isn’t just right in saying that Triple H has more in the tank, he’s being kind in insinuating that Taker even has one. When he does execute Old School, he does a circle around the ring to take in the moment, but he’s already breathing heavy and we’re just 3:30 into the match proper. Taker does get fairly active for a minute, bumping, going over the top rope, goozling Shawn, getting run into the ring post, but when you watch how Michaels, Triple H, and Kane maneuver around ringside, you’re seeing three men with decades of in-ring experience walking step-by-step through a procedural booked just to get their fourth man over the finish line. Undertaker, heaving as he’s whipped into the barricade, will not.
Bell-to-bell, this is perhaps the longest 27:35 in the history of professional wrestling, one of the worst main events of all time. To be fair to Triple H, I will say this: a better, smarter wrestler couldn’t have done much more with The Undertaker than he does here. But being fair to Triple H also means looking at how the story of this match is laid out. The idea here is that the two are great rivals. They aren’t, both in terms of the quality of their output and the fact that Triple H has never beaten Undertaker in a one-on-one environment, but there is a story to tell here, where two men recognize that their time has come and one of them has one more shot to prove that he is the other’s equal, if not his superior. Played straight, I can envision a version of this match that is compelling. Shawn Michaels stays in the United States, Kane remains in Tennessee playing junior fascist, and two aging gunslingers draw down on each other one last time.
Beyond Undertaker not having that in him, Triple H’s mind for wrestling is fucking awful, so while that’s the (supposed) payoff in the post-match encore, he’s incapable of finding a throughline that makes the emotional stakes of the match clear. He and Shawn run their DX reunion hijinx as half-hearted heels, never really committing to the bit because they don’t really want to be booed, both men essentially building their resumes as the future standard bearers of the company. Somewhere around seven minutes or so into the match, after Undertaker does his brutal tummy strikes to The Pontiff of Pain, Taker’s breathing issues become audible, which would have been the time for DX to actually be DX, but once Triple H made the decision to be a facsimile of the classic NWA heels of the 1980s, a whole 18 years before the bell rang on this match, basically any hope for something approaching the skillsets and remaining abilities of these men was lost. It’s not that he and Michaels, doing his next NXT face on the outside as the match continues, aren’t giving it their all — the problem is that they believe “their all” is sufficient. It’s hubris, plain and simple, the smartest guys in the room believing that they can do what every single wrestler since CM Punk in 2013 had tried and failed to do, giving The Undertaker something he can be proud of.
The end result is something that honestly made me sad the first time I watched it. I am an avowed Undertaker critic, and I when Joseph suggested this match I expected to spend the whole match laughing. But if there’s something I believe about The Undertaker, it’s that he believes in the importance of WWE and his importance to it, that he would do anything the company asked him to, whether it’s get his ass whooped by Brock Lesnar or stand in the hallway of a basketball arena in full gimmick for a LeBron James who is never going to come out and greet him. It is sad, ultimately, when the things you believe in fail you, and I am an empathetic enough viewer to recognize that this is what happened at Super Show-Down. The close-up shots of Taker towards the end of the match, his dry heaves, are pathetic enough to engender sympathy from even the strongest hater.
But not only is it not the end for him, it isn’t even the end of this particular story. Despite everything that happens here, Michaels running constant interference and Triple H getting his win after cheating, we are asked, like rubes, to believe that anything we just saw mattered. “It’s over,” Michael Cole says, Triple H crying into his balled-up fists as if he’s finally achieved a long-denied dream. Michaels hugs him, not just as a best friend, but as a fellow competitor who tried and failed to down The Undertaker, who realized after failing to do so two years in a row that his time had come. The Undertaker literally cannot stand. He isn’t selling anything. But this is it, The Last Time Ever. But Crown Jewel is coming, and WWE has a show to run despite the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, so The Undertaker reaches deep down inside himself, barely able to stand, and musters a revenge Tombstone on Triple H. The story never ends. The view never changes. And when it comes to Triple H and The Undertaker, the story and the view absolutely fucking suck.
Rating: Zero stars.