[1997-06-30-WWF-Raw] The Undertaker promo

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Ok, let's recap what we have established so far in this story:

 

- Time period: 1977 (20 years ago)

- There was a funeral home, sitting on a hill, surrounded by beautiful oak trees

- It was a family-owned funeral home with the family upstairs

- The father was the mortician who ran the funeral home, the mother was the receptionist and there were two children, one was Undertaker and the other was named Kane

- The Undertaker's father was an excellent mortician

- The Undertaker was Kane's hero

- Paul Bearer was completing his apprenticeship and going to college at the same time. He worked for Undertaker's father, who taught him everything he knew

- One night, Paul saw the Undertaker and Kane take chemicals from the embalming room and smoke cigarettes outside in secret as he was leaving for his college classes. They were also playing with matches.

- Their father found them playing with matches and they were both punished. After Undertaker was punished, he was sent off to do his chores when he looked back and saw that Kane had the flammable embalming fluids in his hand. He saw smoke and ran toward Kane as fast as he could, but when he got there, the funeral home was engulfed in flames.

- Undertaker was restrained and unable to enter the burning funeral home.

- Paul Bearer returned from work to see the funeral home on fire. Undertaker killed his parents and his brother. Undertaker confirmed this.

- The Undertaker was not at the funeral. Undertaker says this is because two nights before, Paul Bearer took him to a neighboring funeral home to see his family, and presumably his mother's burned body and it mentally scarred him.

- The Undertaker feels a strong sense of guilt and remorse over this.

- In order to cope, Undertaker had to embrace death. He had to understand that without death, there can't be life. He draws strength from the spirit of the dead. This is what made the Undertaker the Undertaker.

[WingedEagle]

I love how you deadpan all of this. Just cracking me up.

[Death From Above]

I hate everything about this angle other than Kane's actual debut which was so weird and movie monster-ish.

[Kevin Ridge]

I hope you keep this up Loss.

[soup23]

You can't follow Loss trying to track this because you know what will happen. Ill just say Night One of the big kick off is really good.

[PeteF3]

Humanizing Undertaker somewhat was the right move to make at this time, and they manage to do so without sinking to the "too into his character" stuff from '99. Later, Undertaker would attack Vader and Bearer would drop the bombshell that Kane personally told him what to say, because Kane was still alive.

[Exposer]

Taker's side isn't much different from Bearer's story. The key here is Taker says he didn't cause the fire, Kane did. He says he tried to save them but the funeral home was engulfed in flames. The dramatic language used in this is a bit much but this was fine. The next segment is great though with Taker attacking Vader & threatening to kill Bearer if he doesn't tell the truth. Bearer spills the beans that Kane is alive & is the one who told him that Taker killed his family. Taker is shocked to here that. I liked JR's "What?!" when Bearer first said "Kane told me!" Intriguing night of storytelling involving The Undertaker.