Undertaker's Character Summer '99

[Emmet]

I've been watching a lot of RAW and SD from the summer of '99 and you can see the change in Taker's character after Fully Loaded '99 and his alliance with The Big Show.

As he said himself in an interview with Michael Cole 'the days of scary music and scary entrances are over', he began to talk more normally and there was no more talk of sacrifices and black weddings. So where was his character going before his groin injury put him on the self, what were the plans for him and TBS in the long term? Was he slowly morphing into the American Badass pre-injury?

 

[Seosa]

In his final appearance before his injury, on Smackdown, despite being in character he's actually wearing a bandana. The changes were definitely being implemented, as though he was merging his darkest character with his actual self.

 

[Vanilla Midget]

I'd say the American Badass character (or something like it) was well in the works shortly after Show and Undertaker were put together. Like any pairing of singles stars, the idea is for them to eventually feud.

Come 1999, WWE was starting to see that characters that are exaggerated versions of the people performing them were drawing. Rock and Austin being the best examples and two biggest draws. It stands to reason that the thought to move a very over the top dark character like the Undertaker into a character closer to the man portraying him could have been a drawing character, therefore a renewed source of revenue and interest in an established star.

Undertaker at this time was more than likely already or beginning to get the ear of Vince Mcmahon. The transition to the biker character would have allowed Taker freedoms such as not dying his hair or applying make up.

We would have seen a slow morph into the biker character over the fall. I think the final trigger would have been pulled early winter, maybe Rumble time, with the end goal of a biker Undertaker vs Big Show match at WrestleMania 2000 (16). The end result would have been biker Taker, only different. We may not have gotten the Kid Rock theme or the American Badass nickname that came along with it, but it would have been the same result.

The Unholy Alliance would have continued in the tag title scene until likely December, perhaps Royal Rumble time. It would have been interesting to see how this affected the dissolution of the New Age Outlaws or the tag team ladder match at Mania 2000.

The end goal of the Unholy Alliance was to turn Undertaker babyface in a biker gimmick so that he could evolve with the times.

 

[therockiswwf]

Undertaker started off that year forming the Ministry of Darkness. He became incredibly dark and started to do very weird things (kidnapping, cutting Viscera's chest open with a knife [yes, really], chaining Mideon in a dungeon, the black wedding, hanging Austin on the symbol, hanging Big Boss Man at Mania, etc).

The storyline at the time was that Undertaker forgot that wrestling isn't real and thought he was actually The Undertaker. But that's for another time.

Anyways, Taker was the doing very dark things. Something had to change. He couldn't keep getting darker as he pretty much did everything but straight up murder someone. As klunderbunker has said, he couldn't just go back to the regular Deadman character after something like the Ministry of Darkness. So I believe that along with a few other factors was why he changed into The American Badass.

He was slowly changing before he took time off for an injury, so it wasn't completely out of left field. It was referenced by Kane when Taker came back that Taker has turned his back on who he really is, a monster.

 

[Soulblazed]

I think that if Taker didn't get injured in mid 99 and actually wrestled at Wrestlemania 16, he would've been simply wrestling as Mark Calaway..He would've dropped "The Undertaker" name altogether and the commentators would've referred to him as "Mark", more or less. I could picture him snapping on wrestlers/commentators who'd out of habit refer to him as "The Undertaker" and tell them "The Undertaker was simply a character I played on tv you moron! My name is Mark Calaway!"

That and as others have said, he wouldn't have had that atrocious Kid Rock theme song..He probably would've had some Johnny Cash-type song if anything.

 

[Carpathian Florist]

I always thought the plan was that, when Big Show retrieved his father's casket from Bossman, it would be revealed that Undertaker was inside, setting up a face Show vs heel Taker at Wrestlemania for the title