The Undertaker Thinks American Badass Could Have Had a Longer Run, Talks Not Feuding With John Cena

The Undertaker discussed his American Badass gimmick during a recent interview with ComicBook.com. During the piece, Taker discussed the gimmick change he went through in the early 2000s as well as why he didn’t work very much with John Cena; those bits are below:

On if he was surprised how well the American Badass gimmick got over: “You know, not really. I think we cut that off. We cut that off kind of early when we did the American Badass the first time. I think we could have got a little more mileage out of it, but, it was a different variation. It was an older iteration of it. The American Badass has got a few more years on him. He’s a little more grizzled even. And there were still so many I think, aspects of The Undertake you could see in there, so I think it was just like I’ve wrapped everything all together. And I think those people were really excited.”

On why he and Cena didn’t do much in the ring together: “No, honestly it was just the booking. And that time period when I was still working all the time, we were both babyfaces so you didn’t really want to do that. And then it just came down to at the end there, John wanted to work with me and do something and it was fresh. And like I said, at this point in the career, it’s hard to come up with fresh matches. It’s just difficult because you have to cycle through everybody so many different times, but no there was never really reason why, it was just the way things were booked.”