Forgotten Favorites 03.14.10: Vengeance 2001 – Rob Van Dam vs. Undertaker

They said it would never happen. They said that perhaps the world had forgotten what it was like to have unforgotten their favorites. That maybe the world had grown … too cold.

But these words you’re currently soaking up with your eye parts are testament to the wrongnosity of the naysayers. The people have cried out for their favorites … and no longer shall they be forgotten! For I am the dude who writes about matches that you may or may not remember but will nevertheless enjoy (re)viewing (again), and I have returned to 411!

I’m not one for long intros, partly because I have nothing to say and partly because people generally skip over them anyway. Although one week I’m going to drop some heavy life-changing knowledge in this upper column area and only the most meticulous of my readers will reap the rewards. So yeah, be on the lookout for that.

Where have I been? Who cares?

A better question is, Who wants great wrestling?

Vengeance – December 9, 2001
WWF Hardcore Championship
Rob Van Dam vs. Undertaker

HOW IT WENT DOWN

Sometimes in life, a man feels he isn’t being shown the proper respect he deserves. When this happens, there are several options available. First, a man may simply accept the fact that this world can sometimes be cruel, and acknowledge that perseverance ultimately rewards. Or, a man may seek to resolve this problem by talking it out with those around him, be it family or friends, and build stronger relationships with the people that he seeks to earn the respect of.

Or, he can just start kicking everybody’s ass.

Ever since his return in May of 2000, with a new look and a new attitude, the Undertaker had been that motorcycle-riding rebel without a cause who the fans cheered on to victory. He put newcomers in their place (Kurt Angle), shut the mouths of the regular major players (Triple H), and defended his place of employment for a Decade of Destruction when the WCW/ECW Alliance posed a threat. But once the Alliance had been done away with at Survivor Series, the Undertaker realized that his mission was no longer to protect his company, but rather himself.

And so on the November 26th, 2001 edition of Monday Night Raw, the Undertaker revealed to the world that he had a new agenda. I’d go into detail, but moving pictures are so much better. The clip below starts right after Vince McMahon’s failed attempt to force Stone Cold Steve Austin to join the elite Kiss My Ass Club. McMahon and his lackey Kurt Angle are in the ring and reeling from the embarrassment of an Austin low-blow, just when Vince notices a certain Oklahoman laughing it up at ringside …

“ARE YOU BETTER THAN ME?”

I marked the hell out when this all went down. My love of JR is nothing compared to my love of heel turns, especially when they’re done as well as this one was. After this night, the American Badass had officially been re-Badassified, and he was now a man on a mission of total annihilation.

Interestingly enough, this mission led him to a man with WWE gold around his waist, although the World Championship that the Deadman is so often associated with was far from his concern. He sought only destruction, and the most efficient way to destroy your enemy is in an atmosphere with no rules. Hence, Undertaker’s entrance into the ranks of hardcore, challenging the reining Hardcore Champion Rob Van Dam to a title match at Vengeance.

I could go into further detail, but as I said, moving pictures always win. The video below includes not only the title match in its entirety, but the pre-match hype package that will bring you up to date on the complexity of the two-week RVD-Undertaker feud. Enjoy!

WHY IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

If you, my dear readers, happen to be my returning dear readers, then you’re probably already aware of my mancrush on the heel American Badass that terrorized McMahonLand some eight-ish years ago. I know the standard IWC policy of fanboyism is usually Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; and true, no one has ever confronted me for an answer one way or the other. But the feeling has grown too strong for me to hide, else my heart may explode. I am now ready to cry out from the highest mountaintop, “Yes! I am in love in a totally not gay way with a fictional male character in a fictional man-on-man sport!” And I should reiterate that this love is in a totally not gay way.

At this point I’d like to remind everyone that I love brutally cheap whiskey, shit that blows up, and the tiggest of the bitties.

And you know who shares my passion for these most maniliest, er, passions? The heel American Badass! Yes, young students of the game, there was a time between the zombified phases of Taker’s career when the Deadman was simply THE man. Of course, the hat and long coat of today has traditionally been a staple of the lightning-wielding, soul-stealing Taker, but chances are the get-up would’ve made a whole lot more sense when Taker heeled it up as the WWE’s own version of The Man With No Name. Indeed, not since the greatness of Back to the Future 3 had someone so perfectly captured the essence of the original cigarello-puffing lone wolf. The heel Undertaker that rose from the ashses of 2001’s slightly-pussified, Sara-protecting, stereotyped hick was the ULTIMATE loner, out to further no one’s career but his own and willing to do it at the expense of absolutely anyone. If he lost his fanbase along the way, so be it. You didn’t have to like him, so long as you respected him. And God help you if he were to find out that you didn’t.

The reason I get such a kick out of going back and watching Undertaker’s years of badassery, particularly his brief heel run, is the fact that it’s such an insane difference from the Taker we know and love today. Watching the hype package for this Hardcore Title match, I was blown away by how commonplace it was for somebody to get the upper hand on the Deadman. This “feud” (if you can call it that) with RVD basically lasted all of two weeks, and on SmackDown’s go-home show for Vengeance, RVD was able to successfully jump Taker and leave him laying. Now, at the time, this was definitely something worth achieving for RVD, since laying out any eleven year company veteran is going to turn some heads. But compared to the impact such an attack would have TODAY, RVD’s one-upping of the Undertaker in December 2001 meant absolutely nothing.

I remember the rumors flying throughout 2003 that the E was considering going back the way of the original Deadman character, and at the time this completely boggled my mind. I couldn’t imagine how the fans could take the dude serious in a supernatural way ever again, considering he’d been so humanized since he debuted the Badass character in 2000. Once you’ve seen a dude’s wife get stalked by DDP (or worse, seen him get eliminated from the Royal Rumble by Maven), how, I wondered, can you even come close to entertaining the thought that he is a potentially undead person with magic powers who walks through fire?

“Yo, VH1, hit me back. Peace.”

And then it happened. WrestleMania XX is where it all literally began again for the Undertaker, resuming his old fire-walking ways. And I can still remember the first few months of this new yet old Undertaker, where I was confused out of my mind as to how to view him. Wasn’t this guy sticking up for Stephanie McMahon less than a year ago and yelling at Vince over a lack of family values? Didn’t this guy job to Albert once? Naturally, I fought the change, and I wished that the E hadn’t halted the evolution of one of their most interesting characters.

But here we are some six years later and I completely accept the Undertaker’s mastery of magic and voodoo powers. Unless I go out of my way to go back and check out old tapes, I can barely remember the time when I watched Brock Lesnar put his hands on the Undertaker’s pregnant wife. This past week on Raw I watched Undertaker cut one of his standard “GIVE ME YOUR SOUL, BITCH” promos on Shawn Michaels, and, as usual, I marked the eff out. When I hear this guy say he’s going to open the gates of hell, I believe it. Of course, this is a testament to the true skill as a performer of the man who portrays the character, considering he can, while on screen, make me completely forget the three and a half years I watched him ride a motorcycle to the ring.

Going back to a match like this one at Vengeance is such a trip because it presents an image of the Undertaker that stands in such stark contrast to the one we’re waiting to face off with HBK at WrestleMania. It’s a trip for fans who have watched the Undertaker’s character go through so many changes over the years, remembering the way the man is so damn convincing in any role he’s given, considering we view him now in a way we may have thought impossible eight or nine years ago. And it’s a trip for the younger fans who may not have been watching (or alive) when this particular match happened, showing a different side to the Deadman that they may never have been aware of.

Aside from watching from the standpoint of the history of Taker’s character, there’s also the fact that this is just a plain old fun match to sit back and enjoy. This was at a time when WWE was trying to restore a slight bit of legitimacy to the Hardcore Title and its matches, trying to make the belt mean a little bit more than what it had been reduced to once the 24/7 rule had overstayed its welcome. RVD and the Undertaker didn’t simply throw us the spotfest that you might expect with the Hardcore Title name being attached to this match. There were big spots, of course, but they were well paced and, most importantly, meant something to the overall psychology of the match. There were no spots just for the sake of them. The result was a really fun, back and forth, extreme showdown, one that, while not as long as I would’ve preferred, delivered in every area that it was supposed to.

WHY IT ISN’T REMEMBERED

Like I was saying, the memory of the humanized Badass is exactly where the E wants it: forgotten. Not that WWE goes out of their way to erase the days of Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit, but they do certainly have very little intention of refreshing the fans’ memories. In WWE’s current super kid-friendly atmosphere, the Undertaker is one of the most popular superstars, and easily one of the company’s top earners in regards to, well, everything. He pulls in that green like it’s his job (because it is), whether it’s headlining PPVs, drawing crowds to non-televised events, selling ridiculous amounts of merchandise, or whatever. Point is this: Zombie Taker makes that money.

Not that WWE revisiting the Undertaker’s not-so-dark days would seriously hurt his current image, but it hardly seems worth the risk for the E. It all comes back to what I was saying earlier about the weakness of Undertaker in 2001 as opposed to the uber-strength he possesses in 2010. RVD laying out the Undertaker with a chair was a big deal then, but can you imagine the impact such an attack would have now? Remember when Jeff Hardy grew a nutsack and attacked the Deadman during his push to the moon on SmackDown? This was a huge deal when it happened, simply because (unless you are of similar height/build and possessing similar magic powers) you do NOT get the upper hand on the Undertaker very easily.

Be afraid. Do it.

If WWE were to regularly remind its fans that the Deadman used to be just a normal dude with regular weaknesses, there is the possibility that the current image of the Undertaker could be damaged. A pinfall over Taker in 2001 meant nowhere near what it does in 2010. And then you have to consider that so much of today’s audience is made up of children, and these are kids that have no idea that the Undertaker even likes Limp Bizkit. Would their image of the indestructible, fire-walking Deadman not be shattered if they realized that at one point in his career the almighty Undertaker was just a regular dude? I can’t help but think that this whole scenario is fairly likely if more and more of the Badass pops up, be it in WrestleMania Recalls or DVD releases. It could harm the image of the character and the mystique of the WrestleMania streak.

Then again, maybe not. There is another Undertaker DVD scheduled for release this year, which means we’ll get to see which direction the company takes. There are still a lot of good to great matches that the Deadman had during his bike-riding days that have yet to be featured on DVD; we’ll just have to wait and see if WWE lets us relive them when their newest Taker set hits the shelves later this year.

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Well, that’ll do it for this week. Hopefully there was no noticeable ring rust in my grand return to the spotlight. I’d like to think this column went more along the lines of HBK at SummerSlam ’02 than Kevin Nash at … any of his return-from-injury matches (and there were so many good ones too).

Let’s hear those comments, be they on the match, my Taker theories, or my lack of ring rust. And, just as before, I want to see your suggestions for future featured matches in Forgotten Favorites. Let your voice be heard.

Until next time, stay safe and out of New Jersey.