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Undertaker: The Phenom from WWF
Home Video
Review
by : Russ
Ray
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 Narrated
by Classy Freddy Blassie, Undertaker: The Phenom covers
Taker's career from 1996 to 1998. This tape is less a highlight
reel of great matches (a greatest hits, if you will), and
more an hour or so of video packages and high spots that don't
really show the psychology of his matches (read: slow pace
due to his lack of conditioning). It tries to tell a story
of how the Undertaker was betrayed by Paul Bearer and later
his brother Kane, and then how the brothers were later reunited.
But, there are two problems with that: it totally skips over
his 1997 Championship reign where Paul Bearer first revealed
the facts about Kane and the Undertaker starting the fire
that scarred his face, and the storytelling aspect of it kind
of fizzles out near the end and forgets to remind us why Undertaker
turned into the "God of Darkness" in the first place. After
watching this tape, you will know one thing: that Vince Russo
ripped every line he wrote for the Undertaker from Pulp
Fiction.
The tape
starts with the Boiler Room Brawl from Summerslam 1996 where
Paul Bearer turned on the Undertaker to side with Mankind.
At the time, it marked a distinctive switch in the amount
of violence that had ever been seen on a WWF show. Previously,
you might see a chair or a ring bell being used, but this
match went into the stratosphere with fighting backstage with
metal pipes, ladders, and anything else they could get their
hands on. However, now it just looks like an overplundered
hardcore match.
They continue
on to the Buried Alive Match in Indianapolis (which I personally
witnessed). This was a pretty good match too of what they
showed. I still remember the spot where they fought into the
crowd as being the first time I saw that. However, the finish
of this one was just silly.
As I mentioned
earlier, the end of the Taker/Mankind feud (with Paul Bearer
in a shark cage) and most of '97 got skipped. Their next selection
is the original Hell in a Cell match with Shawn Michaels at
Badd Blood. This is required viewing, as the psychology of
the match was awesome and Michaels bleeds like a stuck pig.
The finish of the match marked the debut of Kane. Kane would
reappear in the Casket match at the Royal Rumble, with great
coverage of the promos where Michaels thinks that Triple H
or Chyna is inside a casket as a joke. The Rumble match is
really good, but its the last one where we saw Michaels healthy,
because he worked only one match after that: Wrestlemania
XIV where he dropped the title to Steve Austin. Anyway, the
end of this match is pretty cool, because Kane set a casket
on fire that contained the Undertaker.
The Kane
feud is the focus of the Undertaker in 1998, with coverage
of their Wrestlemania match, their Inferno match at Unforgiven,
and their WWF Championship run with Steve Austin. The Wrestlemania
match is nothing to write home about, but the Inferno match
is okay as are the championship matches from Summerslam, Breakdown,
and Judgment Day. However, the only other must-see match on
the tape is the infamous Hell in a Cell match from King of
the Ring with Mankind. Again, they only really show the high
spots, but you get enough of a sense of what went on.
The tape
is too chopped up to really enjoy any of the matches, but
the stuff they do show between Taker and Michaels and the
Hell in the Cell matches are worth giving the tape at least
a look unless you have those pay-per-views on tape already.
This one may be worth a rental, but I doubt it's worth a purchase.
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