During an interview with Demetrious Johnson on the MightyCast, WWE Hall of Famer The Undertaker shared his thoughts on the current generation of wrestlers:
“There’s nothing that I can say that like, ‘They should probably be doing this,’ because they’re killing it. They’re killing it. The only thing that worries me, because I know the physical shape and condition that I’m in, and the things that I’ve had to do since I’ve been in the business, is I worry about their longevity, because of how much they continue to push the envelope.”
He elaborated on the evolution of wrestling styles, stating, “What ends up happening a lot of times, you mentioned it a little bit earlier, about like the character development. There was a time period there, where the character development was really lacking and the athleticism part was there. So they started doing these crazy moves to [compensate]. Then what they end up trying to do is like, okay, well, after two or three times of seeing a double backflip twist off the top rope to the floor, your audience gets desensitized to that, like ‘I’ve seen that. What do you got now?’ Now you have to push the envelope a little bit further, and there’s limitations to what the human body can do. But if you can get them invested in the character, you either gotta make them love you, or you gotta make them hate you.”
The Undertaker also highlighted the inherent risks involved in wrestling: “What people really don’t realize is that within any given match, on any given night, you’re two inches away from something catastrophic happening. Regardless of how much training you’ve had. Then when you think about the number of dates per year that you’re working, that risk factor goes up exponentially. When you’re doing double backflips off of the top rope into a group of people, it only takes one time.”
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