Interview: Undertaker on Characters Being More Important Than Moves in Wrestling

A recent episode of Ed Young’s Wrastlin show had the Undertaker as the guest and one of the topics discussed included why younger wrestlers should prioritize their character work more than their in-ring work.

On the topic of younger wrestlers needing to prioritize their characters more than moves, Undertaker stated he believes wrestlers can only be successful if they can connect with crowds based off of their character work than in-ring work.

“It’s not about the moves — it really isn’t — it’s being able to evoke emotion in one facet or another. You have to either make people love you or you have to make people hate you.”

While discussing more on the topic, Undertaker stated the biggest issue with today’s generation of wrestlers is too much focus is being put towards fancy moves to tell a story when it is only an aspect of storytelling in wrestling.

“A lot of times what happens with these young guys is they’re so athletic, they’re so gifted, they’ll do some kind of double crazy back flip off the top rope and land on somebody on the floor and then that’s what the audience takes away from it: ‘this guy does crazy stuff.’ Well, you can only see that so many times before you’re like ‘I’ve seen that. I need something new,’” he said. “And that’s the position they sometimes back themselves into. They have to keep upping the ante. And when you up the ante like that, then you increase your potential for injuries.”

On the topic of who considers to be great storytellers in wrestling, Undertaker stated The Rock, John Cena, and Ric Flair as his choices.

“So characters like The Rock, (John) Cena, (Ric) Flair, they all had the ability to either make you love them or make you hate them.

That’s the key. We use wrestling moves to tell a story but it boils down to the character and being able to bring either love or hate out of your crowd.”