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| HELL, FIRE AND BRIMSTONE |
Rob McNichol |
Wrestling dentist, fake Diesel, Taker's zombie brother… how has Kane survived 13 years of WrestleCrap?
TAKE 1: LIKE PULLING TEETH
In the summer of 1995, Diesel Power ruled World Wrestling Entertainment. It mattered not that Kevin Nash was neither the most talented nor most popular member of the roster, but that he was big and muscular. Sure, he barely drew a dime, but Vince had firmly established him as the number one guy.
Down the card a little, Bret Hart – having lost the World Title to Bob Backlund at the Survivor Series – had come up short in a match with Diesel marred by interference, but gained a modicum of revenge on Backlund in what was possibly The Hitman’s worst WrestleMania outing. Hart, although occasionally embroiled in meaningless feuds with the likes of Hakushi and Jean-Pierre Lafitte, found time to renew hostilities with long-time bête noir Jerry Lawler, and the two battled at the King Of The Ring.
While Nelson “Big Daddy V” Frazier, in his guise as the rapper Mabel, was winning the tourney to be crowned King of WWE, Hart was taking on the King of Memphis – and beating him. The stipulation in the match was that the loser would have to kiss the winner’s feet; Bret won, so Jerry had to duly pucker up and smooch The Hitman’s tootsies.
This, however, was not the end of it, as Lawler protested that Bret’s feet had given him halitosis. And it just so happened that his dentist was the best part of seven feet tall, jakked and a trained professional wrestler. His name was, of course, Isaac Yankem DDS.
HAVE A CRAPPY CHRISTMAS
As it turns out, Glen Jacobs was no stranger to bad gimmicks. And neither was he a stranger to Jerry Lawler. He was packaged as ‘The Christmas Creature’ for a brief period in The King’s home territory of Memphis, but was met with a tepid reaction – quite possibly due to the garish green outfit with tinsel hanging off it. It’s hard to believe that an association with Lawler could result in something so bad, but their next affiliation would be even worse.
You see, if you were a mid-Nineties wrestler, it would be tough to think of an introduction more exciting than working a programme with Bret Hart, let alone right off the bat of debuting in the most recognised company in the world. And this is exactly what Jacobs did – but not as a mean, badass destroyer. Rather, it was as a cartoon dentist with bad teeth.
Jacobs’ main problem was that this was 1995 – a period (at least in WWE) of wrestling dustbin men, plumbers and pig farmers, but very little believable activity in the midcard. Anyone arriving, however talented, was lumbered with some sort of wacky gimmick. His was the oral hygienist of the King’s Court, which doesn’t exactly scream drawing power, does it?
Isaac Yankem lasted a little over a year, soon becoming detached from the feud with Bret and separated from Lawler completely, before being totally forgotten about. Jacobs had gone from debuting against The Hitman to losing to Bob Holly in his final pay-per-view outing. Bret, meanwhile, had graduated from his no-contest with Yankem at SummerSlam to taking the World Title at that year’s Survivor Series from Diesel. Speaking of whom…
TAKE 2: “DIESEL” POWER
In late 1996, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had left Vince McMahon’s employ and headed to Atlanta, where they did very little – well, except for re-energising the entire wrestling industry. So Vince, having had so much success with his “Billionaire Ted” skits that mocked the aging Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, decided to impersonate the fleeing clique members.
Hall and Nash may have shown up on Nitro as ‘The Outsiders’, but their Razor Ramon and Diesel personas were still intellectual properties owned by Titan Sports. And since WCW was having so much success using a reality-based storyline to hook viewers, McMahon decided to make his own attempt at trying to work the audience.
Jim Ross, from the commentary position, began to allege that Razor and Diesel were returning to the company. Don’t forget that this was 1996, before the boom and before the internet was what it would later become. WWE didn’t explain why Diesel and Razor had left in the first place so, if fans didn’t watch WCW, they wouldn’t have had a clue that Hall and Nash were running roughshod as the New World Order began to develop.
When “Razor Ramon” and “Diesel” did show up, the fans very quickly realised that this was not the return of Hall and Nash but instead two impostors. No one cared about JR’s supposed heel turn and they cared even less for the two phonies that had shown up in place of established stars.
Fake Razor was portrayed by indy wrestler Rick “Titan” Bogner (who would, ironically, later end up wrestling for nWo Japan) while Fake Diesel looked curiously familiar. It was almost like Jerry Lawler’s evil dentist had grown himself a goatee and dyed his hair…
TOO SWEET – BAD FOR TEETH
WWE’s decision to repackage Glen Jacobs as a doppelganger of the departed Kevin Nash was a terrible one. The angle whereby Razor Ramon and Diesel were played by impostors was poor in and of itself, and Rick Bogner bearing barely any resemblence to Scott Hall didn’t help matters.
Jacobs, though, wasn’t recognisable as being the rehashed Isaac Yankem. And let’s not forget that, by being the best part of seven feet tall and looking like a mean dude, he was most of the way to impersonating Nash. But of course, the angle never caught on. If anything it simply alerted viewers that, rather than watching the sub-standard knock-offs that WWE was parading, they could watch the real things tearing up WCW.
Jacobs’ only high point during this time was the 1997 Royal Rumble, where he was the third-to-last man left in the ring at the end. When you consider that the final two were Bret Hart and Steve Austin, the previous two were The Undertaker and Vader, and among the other names making up the final eight were Mick Foley, Terry Funk and future star The Rock, that’s pretty good going for Jerry Lawler’s dentist in a Diesel costume.
However, this ‘third place finish’ was never expanded on – even at the next PPV, where a supposed Final Four Match pitted bogus winner Austin against Hart, Taker and Vader for the vacant World Title. “Diesel” would barely be seen again.
TAKE 3: MATCHES, MATCHES, NEVER TOUCH
In mid-1997, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels’ heated rivalry had escalated to epic proportions both on-screen and off. A title match was signed between Hart and The Undertaker at SummerSlam, with Michaels as a special guest referee. The stipulation was that if Michaels deliberately cost Bret the match, he would be banned from wrestling in the United States – a caveat that also applied to The Hitman if he lost.
Bret angered his nemesis sufficiently that HBK swung a chair at him, but missed and struck The Dead Man instead. You’d think this wouldn’t matter too much, what with Taker being an undead zombie who doesn’t sell, but this particular chairshot gave Bret the 1-2-3 and a fifth World Title. The Undertaker’s ire was then focused firmly on Michaels, and their rivalry was due to be settled in the first ever Hell In A Cell Match at Bad Blood.
This concept has been watered down over the years, what with participants like The Big Boss Man and Kevin Nash, but this inaugural Cell Match was a highly anticipated blowoff to a red-hot feud – and rightly so. There was, however, a further strand to the story; Paul Bearer, Taker’s erstwhile manager, was back on the scene and haunting his former charge, threatening to dredge up some awful secrets from The Dead Man’s past.
This turned out to be a piffling matter – as a youth, The Undertaker had simply burned down his house, killing his parents and permanently scarring his brother. Come on, who hasn’t? Anyway, Paul told Taker that his brother was alive, had developed superhuman powers and was out to get him. The Undertaker sold this with his usual range of emotions (opening his mouth slightly) and then went back about concentrating on his match with Shawn.
For nearly half an hour they tore each other apart inside the Cell in what was an absolutely classic encounter – then the lights went out. A masked, menacing figure, clad head-to-toe in blood red, was led to the ring by Bearer, as ominous music and scarlet light flooded the arena. Vince McMahon shrieked, “That’s gotta be Kane!” And indeed it was.
IF IT BLEEDS, KILL THE GIMMICK
Bad Blood featured a pretty weak card, but the general quality of the shows being put on by WWE was improving. Bret Hart was in the midst of his heel run with The Hart Foundation, Shawn Michaels and Triple H were beginning their D-Generation X act, Stone Cold was on fire and the entire product was becoming edgier – but all at the price of moving further from the ‘sport’ and more towards the ‘entertainment’.
With all the shenanigans and chicanery on the undercard, many wrestling purists demand to see a clean finish to end a main event, and perhaps the most ardent old-school fan may still apply this to Shawn versus The Undertaker inside the Cell. But after 30 minutes of utterly gripping action, a quintessential sports entertainment ending occurred – and it was truly iconic.
We finally had the angle that WWE creative wanted when it debuted the fake Undertaker (Brian “Chainz” Lee) just over three years earlier. Back then, Taker had been squashed by Yokozuna at the 1994 Royal Rumble and ‘died’. It was a particularly awful moment, and one that occurred while Vince McMahon was off defending himself against federal steroid charges.
With McMahon sitting in the dock and without the means to put the kibosh on such a ridiculous angle, it got even worse. ‘Undertaker sightings’ occurred all over the place as if he were Elvis Presley and, to make this all the more bizarre, Leslie Nielson – AKA Detective Frank Drebin of slapstick comedy Police Squad! and The Naked Gun – was drafted in for some wacky attempts at comedy.
Due to this spectacularly contrived build-up – a build-up neither serious nor funny enough to garner a reaction one way or the other – there was no interest in the eventual match at SummerSlam ‘94, between the returning Undertaker and Ted DiBiase’s replica version. (There are a lot of impostors in this story, aren’t there? And we are not finished yet.)
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER IS MY FATHER’S SOMETHING OR OTHER
So, back to 1997 and Bad Blood. The backstory – which involved Taker shifting the blame for the house fire that killed his parents onto his physically and mentally scarred brother, who was subsequently packed off to the funny farm – was hardly run of the mill, and it developed an important character point that had actually been introduced the previous year.
Mick Foley’s WWE debut was preceded by the usual series of vignettes that mid-Nineties wrestlers were brought in with, and frankly they quite out there. The character could have gone either way, had Mankind simply knocked off jobbers on Superstars for ten weeks, but attacking The Undertaker on his first night sure helped things. By the end of the programme, Taker had lost Paul Bearer as his manager and gained something far more important – sympathy.
Fans were fed up of seeing the indestructible Dead Man, and his popularity was waning. With Bearer abandoning him and Mankind getting the upper hand, for the first time The Undertaker revealed emotion and vulnerability. So, when his ‘brother’ hit the scene, his character was far more complex than the longhaired zombie feeding off the power of an urn.
The storyline was that he refused to fight his flesh and blood, and Taker versus Kane would be a programme built for a WrestleMania crescendo. However, it had an initial twist; after Kane delivered a Tombstone on his brother inside the Cell in October, he wouldn’t so much as touch him again until the Royal Rumble in January. With Kane unable to speak, Bearer did all the talking for him. But Kane soon appeared to reject Paul’s overbearing attitude and began aligning himself with his brother.
At the Rumble, The Undertaker faced Shawn Michaels in a Casket Match and was overwhelmed by a swarm of heel wrestlers – just as he had been four years earlier, prior to being thrown in a coffin and “killed”. This time, however, Kane came to his aid and despatched the heels… and then he turned on his brother. Fair game, although locking him a casket and setting him on fire might have been a bit much.
From here, Taker was free from his insistence of not fighting his kin. He went on to defeat Kane at WrestleMania and then again a month later at Unforgiven. And you, the humble WWE viewer, would have been forgiven for thinking that was it for Glen Jacobs. The purpose of his introduction was for this angle with Undertaker and, now that the elder brother had got the upper hand, surely that would be it.
WHO IS THAT MASKED MAN?
Ironically, in an era where backstage skits were all the rage and guys like The Rock were getting over with flashy interviews and endless catchphrases, Kane said nothing. And you couldn’t see his face, so he was expressionless. But when he was awarded the soubriquet of “The Big Red Machine” fans bought the character as a heartless, unfeeling monster. It didn’t matter that he lost to Taker because everybody lost to Taker.
Kane wasn’t ditched because he meant business, literally and figuratively, but it would be some time before he and his big bruv parted ways completely. Kane picked up his first WWE Title later that year, beating Steve Austin thanks to a chairshot from – you guessed it – The Undertaker. The Dead Man aimed at Kane and struck Austin, with the suggestion being that perhaps the brothers were in cahoots. This would not be the last time this was implied.
Kane’s title reign lasted 24 hours until Austin gained the strap back on Raw the following evening, but he was now firmly planted in the upper echelons of the card where he would stay for some time. Brief alliances with Taker came and went, until the elder sibling ditched Kane to realign himself with Paul Bearer and go all satanic for a while.
This left Big Red to his own devices, and he became a de facto babyface. A reluctant henchman aligned with Vince McMahon’s heel Corporation stable, Kane was going through a similar humanising process to that experienced by The Undertaker. While under the auspices of The Corporation, Vince tried to put him in a mental asylum, evoking sympathy for the character and bestowing him increasing human emotion.
He became friends with X-Pac and even got a girlfriend (Tori – formerly Sable’s stalker, latterly Raven’s ninja). Seemingly as adept at performing tracheotomies as he was spinning kicks and making dirty videos, X-Pac helped Kane learn to speak and the pair even won the Tag Titles. Of course, this being pro wrestling, they didn’t stay buddies, go fishing together and become godfather to each other’s kids. Instead, X-Pac rejoined D-X, turned on Kane and stole his girlfriend. The pot-smoking cad.
CHOKESLAMS AND CHEERLEADERS
Things were relatively quiet for Kane in 2000 and 2001. Aside from a feud with Chris Jericho over the dastardly act of a spilled cup of coffee, and some horrible outings alongside his brother during the Invasion, Kane wondered along near the top of the card without really doing much. There was the odd Tag Title here and an Intercontinental Championship there, but the Kane character was largely, ahem, burned out.
In his early guise, Kane was basically Dead Man 2.0; neither speaking nor showing any emotion, he used the Tombstone, the chokeslam, did the Zombie Sit-Up™ and threw lightning bolts around like confetti. But, much like his kayfabe brother, you can only believe in the supernatural so far.
Kane’s character, motivation and origin were in a constant state of flux, and the story of his past with The Undertaker underwent serious changes often on a monthly basis (depending on who was heel and who was face at the time). But, in 2002, the innocent viewing public were to discover yet another strand to Kane’s history – a strand by the name of Katie Vick.
As the story went, Kane in his younger days had hoped to court a cheerleader (Ms Vick) but found his love unrequited. Quite how a disfigured mute locked in a mental institution gets to be friendly with a cheerleader is unclear – perhaps the asylum had a basketball team and his height made him the star player. Anyway, according to Triple H, Kane had raped Katie Vick when she rejected him.
Hunter then exaggerated the story to suggest that Kane’s erratic driving had caused the crash in which Katie died. (Do you think he drove with or without the mask on? And who knows what his driver’s license photo looked like.) Then Helmsley went one step further, using a mannequin in drag to pantomime how the rape had taken place after her death.
The angle was one of those situations where the writers forgot that they were writing a wrestling show, not a bad daytime drama. It was sick, overtly shocking and drew zero dollars. Triple H won the eventual blowoff match for the World Title (yes, this was a headline programme) and the story was mercifully dropped.
BABY… FACE?
After his dignity, the next thing for Kane to lose was his mask. He had actually been unmasked several times before, but always covered up his face. However, during a shortlived alliance with Rob Van Dam (which had all the hallmarks of his earlier friendship with X-Pac), Kane lost another title match with The Game, with the stip that he had to remove the mask for good.
More silliness ensued as, when he finally took it off, the ‘hideous disfigurement’ to his face was simply black streaks of greasepaint that were presumably meant to indicate burns. These disappeared within weeks. (You see, Kane? Had you just let the oxygen get to your face, you’d have cleared up that problem years ago. Just like becoming a babyface cured your vocal chords and allowed you to do Hulk Hogan impressions.)
Alas, losing the mask sent Kane loopy again. After setting Jim Ross on fire he Tombstoned Linda McMahon on the stage, which led to a series of testicle-torturing (literally) matches with Shane O’Mac before Kane decided to assist Shane’s old man in burying The Undertaker alive. Shockingly, Taker refused to allow the act of being killed (again) to stop him, so he returned to haunt Kane and beat him (again) at WrestleMania XX.
The Big Red Machine then shifted his focus and concentrated his energies on the most baffling babyface turn in the history of professional wrestling. It all started with an animal obsession with Matt Hardy’s girlfriend, Lita, which soon led to him kidnapping her. After her announcement that she was pregnant, it turned out to be Kane’s baby.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that this was rape – no, WWE doesn’t do that anymore, not after Katie Vick. This was simply a case of a seven-foot dude intimidating the chick he had a crush on, and simply being so menacing that she had to give in and have sex with him. Aww, isn’t it romantic?
The romance continued to blossom and, after Kane beat Matt Hardy in a “Till Death Us Do Part” Match, he and Lita were married. The wedding ceremony was a standard WWE affair, with the bride wearing a black dress, a bridesmaid (Trish Stratus) in lingerie, a giant wall of fire and Matt Hardy being chokeslammed off the stage. Just like Scott and Charlene off Neighbours…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 29 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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