When The Undertaker rode his motorcycle around the ring and dabbed up Rhea Ripley after defeating her arch-rival Liv Morgan on RAW‘s first episode on Netflix, it felt almost like a passing of the guard from one spooky babyface hero to another.
Ripley, like Undertaker, is a black leather-clad bada** who gets over with a unique mixture of spooky mannerisms and physical dominance, so the pairing makes all the sense in the world. But would either party be interested in developing it into something more expansive, a true partnership, a mentorship, or even a managerial pairing, if you will? Well, on his Six Feet Under podcast, The Undertaker more or less shot that idea down, noting that he simply doesn't feel like his addition to any active storylines would really help elevate the new generation.
“I mean, if there was something really, really good, I would consider it,” he said. “Again, there needs to be less of there needs to be less of me moving forward and more focus on the talent roster that we have. That's the way I look at I think that was perfect, what we did. That was a nice rub, but the less you see of my generation, the better. I mean, some people are gonna look both ways at that. ‘Like, dude, you've been around for 30-plus years. It's only gonna help.' Well, yeah, it helps, but it's also a distraction sometimes. I think it's time. There's always gonna be that moment, that special moment. I just don't want them to be too often, so that reaction that we got the other night is always there,” The Undertaker explained via Fightful.
“I had that kind of a little bit of a little conversation with Paul [Triple H] about that. I don't want to do this too many times. For me, too, I don't want to be that old-timer. Again, that moment was so cool, but it's almost at that point now, there's no one really left in that era that I work with. Roman and maybe CM Punk… [these appearances would be better if they were only] every so often. You know how they used to do those shows sometimes and there'd be old-timers backstage doing s**t? I never want to be in that deal. So it needs to be, in my opinion, every couple of years, if that, and there's only a couple of those left, probably, that would make sense to do.”
Is Undertaker on the money? Would his addition to weekly shows make the next generation of WWE Superstars better off? Or would it instead get The Undertaker more over – as if that's even possible – at the expense of new stars who need to find their own footing without the help of a veteran crutch? While WWE may hope it's the former in the end, it's likely the latter, which is why he's opting against more appearances of the like.