Even people who aren’t pro wrestling types, I believe, have to tune in at some point for the silliness.
I can still remember some of the talent lineup when I was a young ‘un. There was Irwin R. Schyster, the tax collector whose initials were IRS. There was the Mountie, who was … well, a Mountie. There was Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, who would hopefully never lose his mental acuity and have to fall back on his pure athletic talent.
And then there was my favorite — the Undertaker.
The Undertaker’s gimmick wasn’t that he was an actual undertaker, although I suppose that wasn’t mutually exclusive given what we knew of his background. He was a wonderfully ridiculous horror stock character, the kind of over-the-top thing the WWE does in a chef’s-kiss kind of way. The thunderous sound effects! The funereal entrance music! The fact he had a manager named Paul Bearer!
I mean, just let that last one sink in. If you’re a wresting refusenik, you just discovered a wrestler called the Undertaker had a manager named Paul freaking Bearer and you still can’t give the WWE credit, there’s literally nothing I can do for you as a human being. You’re dead inside.
