Ask 411 Wrestling: What Was the Original Plan for the Undertaker vs. Undertaker Feud?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals.

Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Jon is starting with the man in the mirror:

Was it true that the Undertaker vs Undertaker feud was supposed to go beyond SumerSlam 1994 until WrestleMania XI the next year, but the non-reaction the live crowd gave it at SummerSlam scrapped the whole thing?

I’ve never heard of a plan to extend the Undertaker versus Undertaker feud to Wrestlemania XI.

As to what the plan for the feud actually was, there are conflicting stories and it comes down to who you believe.

If you take a look at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the June 6, 1994 issue, which covered Brian Lee’s debut as the fake Undertaker on the WWF’s May 24 television tapings, states that the “long-term plan” would be for the Lee version of the Undertaker to turn on his heel manager Ted DiBiase and for “the two Undertakers to be together.”

Because it was 1994, I’m assuming they didn’t mean “be together” in the romantic sense.

Reporting in subsequent issues of the Observer indicated that the decision to not go further with the Undertaker/Undertaker angle had nothing to do with the reaction to the match at Summerslam and actually had to do with how cold the angle was with fans before Summerslam. The September 5, 1994 Observer, which included the report on that year’s Summerslam, said the program was “deemed such a flop that the decision was made weeks ago to pull the plug on it before its first match.”

There were also claims that, after the decision was made to end the Taker/Taker feud, Brian Lee would be kept around and would be given a new biker gimmick with his past as the phony Undertaker not being acknowledged.

That being said, all the Observer‘s reporting on this has been directly contradicted by Bruce Prichard, who was working backstage for the WWF at the time.

According to Prichard on his Something to Wrestle With podcast, the plan was always for Undertaker vs. Undertaker to be a one-off match, an “attraction” to give the original Undertaker an avenue to return in a big way after he had been out of commission for most of 1994. Afterwards, he would go on to get revenge on Yokozuna, who was responsible for putting him on the disabled list in the first place.

Prichard also said that there were no solid plans to make Lee a full-time part of the roster immediately following Summerslam and that, instead, there were more vague discussions with him that he might be used if the company could come up with something for him.

So, who do we believe?

While I generally trust Meltzer as a journalist and am highly suspect of Prichard because he so obviously tows the WWF/WWE company line in every public statement he makes, this is one where I am more inclined to side with Brother Love.

Somewhat ironically, that’s in large part because of a piece of Meltzer’s own reporting. In the July 11, 1994 Observer, Meltz broke down the lineups that were being put together for the WWF’s September tour of England, which began a couple of weeks after Summerslam. On that tour, the original Undertaker was booked to wrestle . . . Yokozuna.

If the plan had been for Undertaker/Undertaker to continue, normal WWF booking patterns around this time would have had them facing off against each other on the European tour in rematches from their Summerslam encounter. They didn’t, and the fact that it was known they wouldn’t be at least six weeks before SS lends credence to Prichard’s claims that there was never going to be more to the feud after Summerslam.

Jase has timed out:

What very good match do you think wasn’t great because it was actually too long?

Let’s go back 22 years to the 2004 Royal Rumble to talk about Triple H defending the World Heavyweight Title against Shawn Michaels in a Last Man Standing Match.

If you look at it on paper, the bout doesn’t seem too long, clocking in at 22:46, which is about what you would expect from a world title match and/or a match with that stipulation. However, the way the two wrestlers chose to work it made it feel like a slog, with too much laying around and selling relative to the amount of actual action. Though I generally come from the school of thought that believes wrestlers should try to use selling and psychology to milk as much out of as little physical damage to their bodies as possible, something about this particular bout made it feel as though these two legends had overestimated their ability to do that on this particular evening in front of this particular audience.

In all, if you could have knocked five minutes off of this one and picked up the pace a bit, I think it would have been better received.

Marc probably sees my answer coming:

What do you think is the most predictable thing in pro wrestling? For example, my pick would be the “best of” seven match series. You will never have a wrestler/tag team win by 4-0, 4-1, or 4-2. It will ALWAYS go the full 7 matches. At least in a best 2/3 falls match, occasionally a wrestler will sweep the series.

I don’t think that I have ever seen a pro wrestler enjoy a cake that was brought out to the ring for them.

It always winds up going into somebody’s face.

Greg H has be globetrotting:

I’d also like to ask about several masked wrestlers from US indies and a few AJPW wrestlers too. Could you tell me who Senkuma/War Bear, Taiwan Battle Fish, and Togyo from All Japan Pro Wrestling were?

Several years ago, Greg sent me a long list of masked wrestlers from U.S. indies and Japan, asking for help determining who they were. These can actually take quite a bit of detective work, so I’ve barely made a dent in Greg’s requests, but some of my past efforts involve identifying a wrestler with a Flying Vampire gimmick and unmasking Piranha Monster Z, the latter of which may have been the most fun I’ve ever had writing something for this website as it felt like legitimate detective work.

Now, we’re moving to All Japan Pro Wrestling, where Greg has asked me about a handful of wrestlers who appeared on a handful of shows in 2018 and then again in 2019.

The 2018 cards in question are all part of the AJPW Super Power Series tour, specifically those held on May 12, 13, and 14 in Okinawa. On those cards, All Japan regulars are joined by wrestlers whose names are listed as “Togyo” and “Senkuma” on resources like PuroLove, ProFightDB, and Cagematch. On the first show, the two men are in separate matches, but they’re a tag team on the second two.

AJPW held the Super Power Series tour again in 2019, and again it started off with three shows in Okinawa, this time on May 11, 12, and 13. According to PuroLove and Cagematch, a wrestler called “War Bear” appears on all three shows, a wrestler called Taiwan Battle fish appears on the May 11 and May 12 shows, and a wrestler called “Tougyo” appears on the May 13 show. The same results appear on ProFightDB, though instead of “Tougyo,” the wrestler in the May 13 match is listed as “Togyo,” the same name that was used in 2018. War Bear and Battle Fish are on opposite sides of a six man tag on May 11 and then partners in a tag match on May 12, while Tougyo/Togyo and War Bear team on May 13, with Battle Fish not listed on the card.

On paper, this didn’t seem to me like All Japan regulars putting on masks to do wacky gimmicks. Instead, given the fact that these guys are limited to wrestling in Okinawa and are interacting with each other more often than not, this seems like a somewhat common practice in Japanese wrestling, where a larger promotion will do a show in a market outside Tokyo and give an opportunity to a few local wrestlers from a smaller promotion to show what they can do on the card.

Having done a bit of digging, that is more or less what happened, except these wrestlers weren’t “locals” strictly speaking. They were from Taiwan, which is only about a 90 minute plane ride away from Okinawa.

Also, I don’t believe there were four of these Taiwanese wrestlers booked for the All Japan shows. I believe there were two, and I believe the confusion may result from either a typo or a difference in transliteration.

First off, “War Bear” and “Senkuma” are the same guy, even though not all databases list him as such. (ProFightDB does, Cagematch does not, for example.) However, “Senkuma” is just the Japanese translation of “War Bear.” It’s the same dude.

“Tougyo” and “Togyo” are also the same guy, though it appears that in the AJPW results his name was either misspelled or there was some issue with translating or transliterating it from Chinese to Japanese. “Tougyo” and “Togyo” seem to be attempts to list the name of a Taiwanese wrestler named “TouYu.” If you look at multiple sources – including his own Instagram, you will see that an alternate ring name for TouYu is “Battle Fish.”

In other words, in 2018 and 2019, you’ve got two Taiwanese wrestlers appearing across six All Japan shows, though results online use slight variations on their names.

But who are War Bear and TouYu, exactly?

Their careers overlap quite a bit. They both made their pro wrestling debuts in the spring of 2012 for a promotion called New Taiwan Entertainment Wrestling, operated by a veteran wrestler called A-Yong-Go. It appears that most of the first couple of years of their careers were spent in NTW, and they won the company’s tag team titles together in late 2015. The next year, in addition to their NTW bookings, they started taking quite a few matches for Ryukyu Dragon Pro Wrestling, an indy group based in Okinawa. That appears to be the connection that got them booked on the AJPW Okinawa shows, because other Ryukyu Dragon wrestlers were on those cards, including Ultra Soki, Churaumi Saver, and Teelan Shisa.

In 2019, TouYu and War Bear stopped wrestling for NTW on a regular basis, as TouYu opened up his own indy group in Taiwan called PUZZLE, which has been the home promotion for both men to this very day. Though they’ve mostly worked for PUZZLE, they’ve also occasionally popped up in other promotions of note, including both guys having matches for Japanese hardcore company FREEDOMS and TouYu working a pre-show match when New Japan hosted a show in Taiwan in April 2024. His opponent was Axe Wang, a wrestler he trained in PUZZLE.

If you want to watch PUZZLE, they’ve got a ton of content on their YouTube channel, and some of it even has English language commentary if you’re somebody who needs that to get into pro wrestling.

And there you have it, perhaps one of the most niche questions addressed in the history of this column. If you’re one of the guys who hated the recent questions about the NWA Women’s title, I’m guessing your head has just exploded.

Who’s that jumpin’ out the sky? It’s Tyler from Winnipeg:

As a high flyer do you prefer Jeff Hardy or Rey Misterio, Jr.?

I’m a fan of both guys, but if I have to pick one, I’m going with Misterio. If you go back to his early career, he literally revolutionized professional wrestling by creating a hybrid of American style and lucha libre that became popular on both sides of the Rio Grande. He also broke down significant barriers for smaller wrestlers in American promotions. Plus, when it comes to in-ring performance, I think he’s better at selling and physical storytelling than Hardy, which makes him a more complete performer than being simply a “high flyer.”

Big Al needs to stop licking my face:

As most people know, the Bushwhackers were the Sheepherders, mean and violent; basically the opposite of the Bushwhackers. Why would Vince have brought them in and completely turn them into a goofy team where they would lick the heads of fans?

The Bushwhackers made their WWF debut in December 1988, and by that point in time, the company had fully bought in on family friendly fare. You weren’t going to have a gimmick as bloodthirsty as the Sheepherders in the Fed during that era, which is something that Luke Williams and Butch Miller would have very well known before signing on the dotted line with the company. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that they welcomed the change to a more comedic role, because you’re talking about guys who were already in their 40s. Many wrestlers are happen to start utilizing a less physical style by that point in their careers.

Night Wolf the Wise has been repackaged:

What would be your top 10 most ridiculous gimmicks that failed spectacularly?

In no particular order . . .

The Dog: Long-time WCW enhancement guy Al Green is given a regular TV role because Kevin Nash was booking and they were friends. However, I question how good of friends they really were because the gimmick Al got was acting like an actual canine on national TV.

Bone Soldier: Mitsuhide Hirasawa was one of the few graduates of the New Japan Dojo who was just bad in the ring. Despite that, he got a cult following as a comic undercard babyface called Captain New Japan. Then they turned him heel as the “Bone Solider,” which was a dumb name and stupid look that took away Hirasawa’s ability to hide his limited in-ring skills.

The Fiend: You can’t build a good 15 or 20 minute wrestling match around an invulnerable Jason Voorhees style movie monster, and it was made even worse by the pseudo-intellectual babble that was written for Bray Wyatt.

The Ding Dongs: They wore bells all over their gear. They rang bells while they wrestled. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. It made no sense and actively detracted from matches.

Beaver Cleavage: Even if you somehow found his pre-debut vignettes funny, how in the world would this translate into a character on a wrestling show over the long term? There’s a reason it was dropped immediately after the gimmick’s in-ring debut.

The Gobbledy Gooker: Wrestling has had a lot of bad gimmicks, but very few of them were booed out of the ring from the second they debuted. This is one of them.

”That 70s Guy” Mike Awesome: Awesome had a ton of upside, and I don’t know why anybody thought making him an out of touch goof obsessed with 20-year-old pop culture would get him over.

Dragon Solider B: In 2005, New Japan and ROH were collaborating on a “Best of the American Super Juniors” tournament. NJPW sent Kendo Kashin to participate, but for some inexplicable reason he adopted a one-off gimmick of Dragon Solider B and really half-assed it. Oh, and he won the whole tournament, too.

Richard & Rod Johnson: It’s a gimmick built around penis jokes. Again, who thought this had a shelf life of more than ten minutes? (Hint: It’s Vince Russo.)

Lord Tensai: Matt Bloom is not a bad wrestler. However, he had run his course in WWE, and when they tried to repackage him as the Asiatically-obsessed Lord Tensai, nobody was buying it.

That does it for this week. We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.