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411’s WWE Rivals Report: Episode 2: The Undertaker vs. Kane

July 18, 2022 | Posted by Robert Leighty Jr.
The Undertaker WWE Kane Brothers of Destruction Image Credit: WWE

-I’ll include links to previous episodes from this new series. Shawn/Bret can be found here. Now to a story that has covered quite a bit by WWE in the last two years which means I’m not all that excited for this one. Let’s get to it!

-Undertaker feels the story with him and Kane is the greatest story in WWE history. Not an opinion I share, but he explains his reasoning. Kane says Batman had The Joker and Undertaker had Kane. R-Truth compares their fun to like seeing your favorite horror movie. Michelle McCool, and Miz pop up as talking heads on this teaser as well.

-This is WWE Rivals!

-As noted in Episode One there is a roundtable with Freddie Prinze Jr leading things and at the table is Kevin Nash, Kofi Kingston, Tamina Snuka, and JBL. Freddie mentions both Taker and Kane terrified him and for him wrestling is the pure definition of art. It’s no mistake they work on a canvas. Nash calls Taker the most iconic character. He compares working with Taker like being on top of Everest, but without oxygen.

-Mark Calaway tells us he was excited by the name Undertaker but fell in love with the character when he saw the storyboards in Stamford. He brings up the fact that his character was originally Kane The Undertaker and they dropped the Kane quickly. They had no clue that seven years later that name was going to come back into play.

-Steve Austin talks about the way Mark nailed the character with the slow methodical movements. Everything was by self design and nobody could have pulled the character off like Mark did. We see video of Taker highlights including pulling Diesel through the ring.

-Bruce Prichard puts over Paul Bearer and how it was a match made in heaven. Paul was the mouthpiece since Taker was a man of few words. Taker says it sounds crazy, but fans would come up to Paul and ask if Taker was really dead. Taker lived the gimmick and made sure he was always wearing black. Paul Bearer, from a 2011 interview, tells us he felt naked when he didn’t have something in his hands and carrying an urn popped in his head. The little things made the character strong: the urn, throwing lightning, fire balls, etc. Cool piece of trivia as Taker tells us that the babiest of all baby faces, Ricky Steamboat came up with the idea of putting his opponents in a body bag.

-We see Taker beating Hogan for The WWF Title and Kane says Taker was his favorite wrestler before he even became a wrestler.

-Back at the roundtable JBL talks about having a match with Taker and getting caught up in the entrance like he was one of the fans.

-Prichard mentions they needed to freshen the act up after 5-6 years. That leads to Paul Bearer turning on The Undertaker. The idea was for Taker to take the next step they needed to heart from him more and thus no mouthpiece was needed. They needed a monster and he wasn’t on the roster yet. They went to the Bible with Cain and Abel and the idea that Taker has a long thought dead brother named Kane.

-They go through the origins as Kane was burned in a fire with this parents, but survived and was being taken care of by Paul Bearer. They spent the better part of six months building up this character even before he debuted.

-Commercials!

-Back to the roundtable as they discuss who else could give Taker a legitimate fight as he has battled everyone on the roster. Glen realized getting the character of Kane was his big break. We see early sketches of the character and it wasn’t what he and Taker figured the character would be. They were thinking Jason, but Vince convinced them that Kane took pride in how he looked because he felt he was a superhero and was better than his brother.

-They have footage of Glen working as Kane in a warehouse with Jim Cornette to get the mannerisms and character down. Vince wanted Kane to be the anti-Undertaker and had to use some of his moves while working in his own. They show Cornette coaching up Kane on how to do a zombie sit-up.

-Badd Blood: Hell in A Cell I: Shawn and Taker discuss the idea for Hell in a Cell. Shawn just wanted a cage with a top and WWE just went all out with it. Amazing match and still the best cell match of all time. This was basically a horror movie with Taker as Jason and Shawn as the last surviving girl in the movie.

-History time as Kane debuts and Glen gets goosebumps talking about it still. “That’s got to be Kane. That’s got to be Kane.” Great sell from Vince! Kane rips the door of the cage, attacks the ref, and has a stare down with Taker. Tamina mentions they can just get over by staring at each other or out at the crowd. Taker feels it was one of his best reactions ever as you could see the confusion and fear in his eyes.

-Commercials!

-JBL says it was the first time you saw humanity in Taker. Kane says it was magic and you could feel it from the start. Taker would throw his hands up to raise the lights, so Kane lowered his hands to shoot fire. Kane gives Taker an ugly Tombstone and thankfully he would get much better. Shawn crawls out of a pool of his blood and gets the win. Coming up on twenty five years for that match and Kane’s debut.

-The story goes that Taker vows to never fight his flesh and blood. Kane runs through wrestler after wrestler until Taker agrees to a match. Kane slaps Taker, but he won’t budge and turns the other cheek before walking away. AJ Styles pops up and calls Kane a super jacked human being that is scary. He was all in on seeing Kane vs. Taker. Miz says it felt real because it was a sibling rivalry. Taker says it was real life exaggerated.

-Back to the roundtable as Kofi says that as silly as the story may sound, it happens. People can relate to a brother doing something terrible and blaming his brother for it. JBL jokes that “a brother that blamed you for murder.” Kofi says that is where the entertainment factor comes free.

-Kane says it was the sibling rivalry that helped draw in the fans as everything else they did was unbelievable.

-Royal Rumble 98: Taker vs. Shawn III and Kane makes the save as he clears the ring of men fighting Taker. Just a tease though as Kane turns on Taker and sits a casket on fire with Taker inside. Kane knew they were heading to WrestleMania. Sitting Taker on fire made him pissed and the match was made.

-JBL feels Taker is the greatest character WWE has ever produced. Kofi was in the crowd for WrestleMania XIV in Boston. He and his friends had awful seats but even in the last row could feel the heat from Kane’s pyro. Kane and Undertaker discuss their WrestleMania match and how there was no guarantee that Taker was going to win this one.

-Commercials!

-JBL says Kane added so much to Taker’s career and calls Mark and Glen the two most liked guys in the business. Umm, I wouldn’t say that’s true anymore.

-Kane says the match at WrestleMania XIV was the climax of the original feud. Taker points out nobody ever kicked out of The Tombstone, but Kane kicked out of it twice before a third one finished the match. Kane was impressed that Taker treated him as an equal.

-Unforgiven: Inferno Match! Heyman: “what’s more personal that trying to set your brother on fire.” Man has a point. Mick Foley geeks out over the addition of fire. Taker felt someone had lost their mind. Taker says the flames sucked all the oxygen out of the ring which made it hard to breath. Kane gets his arm set on fire to lose the match.

-Kane discusses The Attitude Era and puts Taker over for reinventing himself. Taker thinks the character would have survived but may not have grown without his moving away from the original character. The America Bad Ass character freed him up a bit and let him work differently. That leads to Kane and Taker forming a tag team and that is the birth of The Brothers of Destruction. Austin says it was so cool to see two monsters wreck people. Kane knew the fans always wanted the two characters to get together on the same side. The Miz asks who could take out that team? They just mowed through everyone.

-Taker used that to help Glen come along and Glen enjoyed adding new touches to the character.

-Kane talks about the character getting stale and that leads to RAW in 2003 where Kane takes off his mask for the first time. Miz was a fan and just wanted to see what was under the mask.

-Commercials!

-Kane unmasks and Taker puts over how Glen was always able to reinvent the character. He mentions they characters can be separated for years, but the fans were always with them when they would get paired up again.

-That leads to WrestleMania XX where Taker comes back as The Deadman and gets a win over Kane. Back at the roundtable Kofi brings up that if you look at the stats, Taker has won like 75% of the matches against Kane, but it doesn’t matter in their feud.

-They touch on the run they had in 2010 when Kane became World Champion. They had a Hell in a Cell Match and then a Buried Alive Match at Bragging Rights. Undertaker knew that Kane needed wins over him in a big PPV match to become a legitimate champion. Kane buries Taker and promises he is never coming back.

-Commercials! Rock/Austin next week!

-We jump forward to 2018 as Kane mentions they have talked over the years about retirement. Nostalgia kicked in and apparently people wanted the old Undertaker and Kane back. Not mentioned but they show them in the tag match at Saudi Arabia. Taker doesn’t think the story telling in their rivalry will ever be matched.

-Back to the table where Nash mentions the first rivalry, he knew was Ali/Frazier and Ali was untouchable, but Frazier got him once. Taker seemed untouchable, but you always knew Kane had a shot in any match between the two.

-Kane gets inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2021 and thanks “his daddy” Paul Bearer and “brother,” The Undertaker. Kane puts over Mark and again goes back to where would Joker be without Batman and where would Batman be without The Joker.

-The Undertaker gets inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022. He gives the longest speech in HOF history, which isn’t a complaint as it was awesome. He thanks Kane and again calls their rivalry the greatest wrestling story every told. Kane thinks a high school drama teacher fifty years from now will use their story to teach his students. Taker feels parents will tell their kids about the rivalry in twenty years.

-That wraps up episode two and again, nothing new here other than the Ricky Steamboat trivia. As I mentioned the WWE has produced a lot of Taker/Kane content in the last two years, so if you have seen any of that there was a lot of rehashing here. The pacing was a bit weird as they took a bit to get to the debut of Taker and that first match before blowing through the next 14 years quickly. I still feel it is silly to call their story the greatest in wrestling history, but opinions are just that. Thanks for reading!

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WWE Rivals, Robert Leighty Jr.