video: the undertaker vs. papa shango

in the late 80’s and early 90’s, professional wrestling was real. Not just to me, a child who was convinced that playing Monopoly involved physically constructing houses and hotels in one’s neighborhood, but to a large number of (ostensible) adults. it was called “professional” for a reason; those guys in the headgear at the olympics were basically just fooling around, hoping that they would someday get called up to the big leagues and compete against real athletes like jake the snake roberts, kamala, the ugandan giant and the one man gang.

you can just how deadly serious the level of competition in the wwf was in the above video, a 1993 match between the undertaker and papa shango. listen to the sweet voice of professional rapper/jerked beef advocate/crazy person randy “the macho man” savage as he describes just what is at stake when you face the undertaker.

but the undertaker wasn’t actually an undertaker by trade (oddly enough, william moody, who played the undertaker’s turkey-necked handler, paul bearer, is a licensed mortician). no, the undertaker, one of the most popular and successful competitors in this very real sport, was a fucking zombie with unspecified but terrifying supernatural powers. He could make, for instance, the house lights of the arena turn on with a wave of his magic zombie hands. He had a magic urn that both the source of his powers and the source of human fucking remains that were thrown in your eyes and mouth by paul bearer, causing you to lose the match (and possibly become a zombie cannibal, forever cursed to roam the earth). When announcers referred to him as “the dead man,” they were not being glib or metaphorical; they were talking about an relentless animated corpse that would murder you with a tombstone piledriver. a walking sin against god and man.

why the PMRC, who had recently been successful in convincing members of congress that the devil himself was speaking to the youth of america through their twisted sister albums, did not go after this abomination is unclear, but I imagine they feared a reprisal in the form of a wave of the living dead gnawing through their leg bones as they cowered in a suburban mall. thus, the undertaker was free to continue his reign of terror, and does so to this very day (though he was a non-undead, i.e. alive, leather biker guy for a few confusing years).

you might think the niche of people who would pay to see who would win in a fight between a zombie and a sumo wrestler (short answer: everybody. slightly longer but still quite short answer: heart disease), would be rather small. but the undertaker has proven you wrong for almost two decades now. compare his necromantic success to our friend jake the snake, who can be seen in this match against crippling chemical dependence and quite possibly neurosyphilis (hint: he loses).

jake, on the special snake sauce:

related stories

	daily life lessons from evil wrestlers 6
	daily life lessons from evil wrestlers 15
	the shockmaster: the worst thing to ever happen in professional wrestling