My Favorite Wrestling Feuds #10: The Undertaker vs Mankind

Watching Mark Calaway talk or wrestle is like drinking a tap water and spit cocktail. Watching Mark Calaway call himself Booger Red, or toss on an American Flag and a leather jacket and wrestle as a biker is less exciting than watching two sleepy kids play with those Wrestling Buddies pillows from the 1980s. When Mark Calaway talks, you can smell Donald Trump's filty diapers on his breath. Mark Calaway currently sucks and has always sucked. But slap a black duster, a wide brimmed hat, and an Emo Lead Singer's worth of mascara on the guy and call him The Undertaker, and you've got one of the best wrestlers of all time. Kind of.

When The Undertaker zombied his way to the ring for the first time at the 1990 Survivor Series, he was a revelation. He destroyed everyone and everything in his path but got distracted by some outside interference and was counted out during his first match: a ten person tag team event. It was fine, he spent the next few months squashing every wrestler who got in the ring with him. It was beautiful. He was slow, deliberate, and unstoppable as The Undertaker. After defeating one aging murderer (Jimmy Snuka) and having a surpsingly dull match against the incredibly talented Jake The Snake Roberts, The Undertaker was ready for The Big Time, and he entered a feud with Terrible Terry Six Moves (sometimes referred to as Hulk Hogan). It was boring. The story was dull and the wrestling was tedious. A slow and deliberate killer against a fast moving athlete is awesome. A slow and deliberate killer against an overacting steroid user who can't actually wrestle doesn't make for tittilating entertainment.

I lost interest in The Undertaker until his weirdly chaotic battle with Yokozuna where every villain in the then World Wrestling Federation came out to the ring to eventually close The Undertaker in a casket where he "died" and went off television for a few months.

Meanwhile, in World Championship Wrestling, a disturbing maniac who didn't look like anyone else in the business, Mick Foley, was having fascinating matches with superstars like Vader and Abdullah The Butcher. Was he a great wrestler? It was hard to tell. He was definitely better than Hulk Hogan. But he wasn't one of the new high flying cruiserweights, he wasn't a body builder with bulging veins, he wasn't some skinny gymnast or a beefy giant. He was just a pretty big guy with a unique look. He lost an ear during a match against Vader. His hair was...somehow both stereotypically long, wrestling locks, and not at all sterotypically long, wrestling locks. He said "Bang bang" a lot, and went by the name Cactus Jack. He was an anomoly but not a star. His stories were kind of basic and never really went anywhere.

​After a few years, Cactus Jack moved to Extreme Championship Wrestling while also fighting in Japan. His matches were wild. In Japan he, Terry Funk, and Mike Awesome were a trio of unassociated Americans fighting in Exploding Barbed Wire Matches where they'd end up bloody and...well...covered in smoke from all the explosions. It was amazing, and each of them brought a bit of that hardcore violence back with them to ECW. Cactus's promos evolved into squealing, passionate declarations about how disappointed he was in the fans. Not because they were fat, gross, or stupid, which was the usual heel promo against fans, but because the fans encouraged such dangerous violence. After ECW fans heckled a wrestler who'd fell nearly to his death and hit his head on the concrete, Cactus Jack lost all faith in the fandom. It was weird, and incredible to watch. But he still wasn't on TV enough for me to consider him a star.

Apart from the occasional casket match, The Undertaker was boringly slogging through matches in the WWF. This wasn't his fault. There was a dearth of talent at the time, and the writing was awful. Eventually, WWF talent relations director and legendary announcer, Jim Ross, convinced Vince McMahon (the world's creepiest sex offender, and owner of the WWF) to hire Mick Foley. But Vince didn't like the Cactus Jack character so they slapped a white button-up shirt or black t-shirt with a red flannel vest, and a leather mask on Foley's face and rechristened him Mankind.  This was an inspired decision.

​Watching The Undertaker dismantle a normal person was pretty boring. Of course, Joe Skimpytrunks couldn't defeat a zombie giant. A four hundred pound sumo wrestler couldn't defeat The Undertaker unless every other wrestler in the company helped him cheat. The creepy, androgynous guy dressed like an Oscar statue couldn't defeat The Undertaker, either. What chance did normal humans have?

Mankind was not a normal human. The basement dwelling, squealing monster almost immediately began interfering in The Undertaker's matches. They battled on the regular, weekly TV show, Superstars, and it was okay. They wrestled at The King Of The Ring, and it was one of the better matches of the night, even though it wasn't exceptional. Still, there was something there. Chemistry. The Undertaker's looming deliberation, and Mankind's insane energy and willingness to let his body get wrecked was a surprisingly good combination.

​During the summer of 1996, Mankind and The Undertaker battled in the first ever Boiler Room Brawl. Basically, they started in an arena basement, which was filled with ladders and lead pipes and chairs and other weapons that weren't common to see in WWF/E matches at the time. The object was just to get the hell out of the basement and into the ring and pin your opponent. It wasn't wrestling, it was a horror movie. And it was a joy to experience for the first time. The two of them destroyed each other, got in the ring, and then had a fantastic twist ending to their fight that demanded there be some sort of rematch.

The rematch? WWF/E's first ever Buried Alive Match. Mankind and The Undertaker had to battle in the ring until one of them could take the other to a grave that had been dug in the arena, and then one of them had to throw the other in the grave and cover them with dirt until they were buried alive. There was a bit more wrestling in this one but it was still more about the gimmick than the athleticism. And that was ok. It's a zombie mortician vs an insane, mask-wearing weirdo, the story is always going to be more important than the actual wrestling. ​

The two of them continued having mostly great mathes for the next three years. While Mankind had several entertaining feuds, The Undertaker's opponents, apart from Shawn Michaels, never really lived up to the presence of The Undertaker. Even Kane, a character designed to be The Undertaker's greatest foe, never had a good match with The Undertaker, mainly because, as a wrestler, Kane is tall and that's about it. Take away the fancy mask and the superhero bodysuit and Glenn Jacobs (who played Kane) was boring and only entertaining to watch when writers paired him with small, athletic weirdos like Daniel Bryan and Rob Van Dam. On his own and with The Undertaker, Kane was a bread sandwich with room temperature milk. So, time and time again, to spice things up, the WWF had to throw Mankind into pretty much any feud The Undertaker was in. It always made for great TV.

We'll get to Shawn Michaels feud with The Undertaker later but I need to mention that the highlight of their first feud was the first ever Hell In A Cell Match where Shawn and The Undertaker annihilated each other in a spectacular match where they were locked inside a giant cage.

The second ever Hell In A Cell Match was The Undertaker vs Mankind, and Mick Foley (an mankind) decided that the two of them should start the match on top of the cage instead of inside it. This led to the first and most spectacular spot ever where someone (Mankind) was thrown off the top of the cage. It destroyed Foley's body, and yet he got back up, climbed back on the cage and they started throwing punches again, and then....well, you should watch the match, it's a train wreck. It's very short but it feels like it's hours long because so many intense things happen. It's one of the greatest spectacles in wrestling history.

They had other matches after that. Most of them were good to great but there was no way to top the Hell In A Cell match, so they eventually drifted to other feuds. Mick Foley even changed his gimmicks after that, sometimes wrestling as a Shawn Michaels wannabe called Dude Love, and sometimes resurrecting the Cactus Jack character. 

While The Undertaker will appear one more time on my list of best feuds, this was definitely Mick Foley's best. He also had memorable short feuds with Randy Orton, Ric Flair, The Rock, and The Edge but his gimmick matches with The Undertaker were some of the best ever contended in WWF/E history.