With Survivor Series 2015 marking 25 years of the Undertaker, what better time is there to look back on some of the greatest and most memorable rivalries in the Dead Man’s WWE career? Join Matthew Roberts as he takes the second of a three part look at the opponents that played their part in making The Undertaker’s career so legendary.
JAKE ROBERTS
Your could never claim that Undertaker’s feud with Jake Roberts produced classic wrestling matches. The one ppv match at WrestleMania VIII lasted six minutes and you’d struggle to even call it average. But this rivalry was about more than in ring action.
Up to this point, Taker had been a heel in the WWF and in those times it was difficult to imagine, despite growing popularity, how a “dead man” could ever be the “good guy”. But what it needed, and what he got with this feud, is someone even more evil than himself.
They started as allies, when our guy helped Jake fool the Ultimate Warrior and then the pair gatecrashed the wedding reception of Macho Man and Elizabeth. But Jake threatening Elizabeth with a Steel Chair was too much even for the dead man. An altercation on the Funeral Parlour saw Roberts slam a casket lid shut on Taker’s hand but even that was not enough to stop our guy from giving chase.
As said, the pay off match itself was average at best, and other than being the second match of the famed Streak would probably not be remembered at all. But it’s importance as a rivalry should not be underestimated.
For the first time it showed fans the “good” side of The Undertaker and gave fans a reason to cheer the Dead Man. It would stay that way for quite a while…
KANE
Although this was a feud which started in 1997, when Kane made his debut by costing Undertaker the inaugural Hell in a Cell match, they actually met two years earlier…of a fashion. The first ever meeting actually took place in Smoky Mountain Wrestling as Unabomb clashed with Taker at the Superbowl of Wrestling. Isaac Yankem was also on opposite sides of the ring to Taker in a 1995 Survivor Series encounter.
Of course it was a very different character that Paul Bearer brought to the WWF, concocting an intriguing tale of Taker’s brother wanting revenge for being caught in a fire when they were children and the subsequent twists and turns before they finally clashed at WrestleMania XIV.
They would subsequently use the fire in their past to battle in the first ever WWF Inferno match, where flames surrounded the ring (a match they would clash in again on Raw the next year). They battled Steve Austin separately and then were used as pawns in Vince MacMahon’s war with Austin. They would continue to clash into the 21st Century and met again at WrestleMania XX in 2004.
As late as 2010 they had another main event feud, taking in No Holds Barred, Hell in a Cell and Buried Alive matches on PPV.
Dotted throughout this time was their run as the Brothers of Destruction tag team, a tandem back together again this year for Survivor Series. But no matter how much they dominated the opposition as a team, their rivalry will go down as one of Taker’s most intriguing rivalries.
KAMALA
Again this was not a feud which would challenge anybody putting together a list of five star matches but it was an important one in terms of, for better or worse, mapping out the path that The Undertaker would walk in the mid 1990’s.
Harvey Wippleman brought the Ugandan savage to the WWF and almost immediately set him in the direction of the Dead Man. Fans would become used to an evil manager summoning a beast to dispatch Taker but this was the first.
The only problem for poor old Harvey was the small fact was Kamala’s deathly fear of coffins, a weakness Undertaker would take advantage of by dispatching Paul Bearer to ringside during Kamala’s matches with a coffin in tow.
Eventually the only way this issue could be solved was at Survivor Series 1992 and the WWF’s first ever Coffin Match. As cheesy and as hokey as that might seem now it was a huge event at the time and was a gimmick match the WWF would return to time and time again.
And it also put Taker’s skills in the day job to the test as he had it build a very large coffin indeed in preparation!
KURT ANGLE
This was another rivalry that never really got one extended run but there were a number of smaller feuds between the two that captured the imagination of fans.
Their first run around in 2000 was something of an anomaly in this list. Angle was new to WWE, and was playing the cowardly heel who was deathly afraid of the Undertaker, but desperate to show he wasn’t. To the extent he attacked the Taker’s bike, but quickly tried to make amends by offering him a new scooter. Although the subsequent match was somewhat of an extended squash, it was still entertaining. Angle would successfully defend his World Title against Taker later that year at Survivor Series in another match that nevertheless seemed set out to prove Taker’s superiority.
By the time they clashed in 2002, things were on a more even keel. A classic Smackdown match, where they drew leading to a three way match at Vengeance with The Rock was a highlight in the ring but the best match they ever had would come at No Way Out 2006 which, up until Taker’s Mania classics with Shawn Michaels, was the best straight one on one bout of Taker’s career.
Regardless of whether or not Angle’s claims of him being “considered” to end The Streak (and on occasions he’s claimed Taker wanted him to end it) the quality of their matches would certainly have warranted a match on the biggest stage of them all. There are more famous rivalries in the Dead Man’s career, but this one provided some excellent matches.
MANKIND
If the only match that these two had was the one at the 1998 King of the Ring, their rivalry would probably still be worthy of a place in this list. It’s without doubt the most famous match of the Attitude Era, and would likely feature highly in a list of the top 10 most famous WWE matches of all time.
And yet it was merely one chapter in a storied and epic rivalry.
On his very first night on WWE TV, Mankind made an immediate impression by attacking the Dead Man and if anyone thought that Mrs Foley’s baby boy was just the latest in a long line of Taker’s victims, they were proved wrong when Foley defeated him at King of the Ring and then was able to bring Paul Bearer to his side in the course of beating him again at SummerSlam 1996 in a Boiler Room Brawl.
Although Taker would exact revenge at that year’s Survivor Series, the two would clash again over the World Title in 1997 before resuming hostilities in the aforementioned Hell In A Cell battle in the midst of wars that brought in the likes of Kane and Steve Austin.
The Rock and Sock Connection would swap tag team title reigns with Taker and the Big Show in 1999 but those were the last vestiges of the war.
At a time when top quality in-ring feuds were not common place for Taker, the 1996 feud with Mankind was a revelation and showed what a company man Taker was, as he unselfishly put the “new guy” over. 1998 saw brutality taken to new heights in what some might say it was the moment that the WWE went as far as they could. Regardless, it was the most insane and memorable moment in an epic rivalry that left fans in awe.
Keep an eye out for the third and final part of The Undertaker’s Greatest Rivalries, as well as other TWM articles as we celebrate of 25 years of The Undertaker.