by Penny Sautreau-Fife
I’m troubled by something.
Kayfabe is for the most part dead. The wrestling business, (Fuck you Vince, that IS what you are a part of), has pretty much opened it’s doors. Most people know how things really work. Wrestler biographies like Foley’s, documentaries like Beyond the Mat, these things have pulled down the curtain. There really aren’t many secrets left in wrestling.
Except where the Undertaker is concerned.
The Undertaker is probably the last wrestler left who’s character is protected from too much revelation. His DVD sets have always been kayfabe sets. No life-story documentaries of Marc Calloway no sir. All you get is the unearthly story of the Undertaker. Wrestlers sill react to him like they’re watching a demon rise from Hell. Hell, when a fan had a “Michelle McTaker” sign in the audence at an NXT taping it was confiscated to protect the storyline non-existance of any such relationship.
Normally I dismiss this as just a silly throwback to an older time. But right now it worries the fuck out of me.
Taker damn near killed himself Sunday. Fran and I were legitimate frightened for his health. It is very much NOT in character for the almighty Undertaker to be incapable of walking to the back under his own power. In 30 years of watching wrestling and over 20 of the Undertaker’s WWE tenure,I don’t EVER remember seeing him like that. As a current concussion sufferer I’d bet good money he has AT LEAST what I have, a serious concussion. I’d be willing to throw a little spinal trauma in there too right now.
But that’s speculation. All ANYONE has is speculation. Because no one is actually REPORTING anything.
Normally when a wrestler has a legit injury these days, we hear about it. We get news. WWE.com has actually been pretty good about being forthcoming about their talent’s injury status. But because the Undertaker is still heavily kayfabed, we’re getting nothing. And that woeeies the fuck out of me.
I’m not an idiot. I can generally differentiate a legit injury from a storyline one. A legit injury always destroys the flow of a match. A good observer can tell when something is being hastily improvised on the fly in the ring because of an injury. And I’m not even close to the only one who noticed the odd abruptness of the Hell’s Gate finish that seemed completely off-flow, especally with Taker so clearly caught on camera whispering something in Triple H’s ear, which was most likely an “I can’t stand up, we have to imptovise”.
So we all know he’s legit injured. And if it kept him from even being able to so much as sit up by himself, it’s damn sure serious. Not that any of us know for sure, because kayfabe says the Undertaker is incincible. So no one in the know is releasing and info.
And that just leaves me worried sick. Fuck the Rock, fuck Cena, fuck everything else that happened. Others have already dissected the steaming pile this year’s Wrestlemania turned out to be.
All I want to know is if Marc Calloway can walk.
