For the vast majority of his run in WWE, the Undertaker was one of Vince McMahon‘s guys.
If Mr. McMahon needed a locker room leader, he'd turn to the “Deadman.” If he needed someone to ensure a finish went off correctly, the “Deadman” was always down to make it work, even if Mr. McMahon didn't always go down that road, as fans learned with the Montreal Screw Job. And if he needed a good to all-time great match at WrestleMania, for the better part of 30 years, Taker was the man to call for the job, as he became a headlining attraction without a belt around his waist.
And yet, Taker and McMahon weren't always on the same page through their shared time in WWE, as there was one particular case in 1999 when the then-WWE CEO was so angry he had the “Deadman” drop his belt on RAW to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
“Vince [Vince McMahon] pulls Stone Cold, Triple H, Kane, and me into a room. He's livid, beside himself. ‘Something is not working. Something is not working right. We have to change some things. Steve, you're going over Taker tonight. We're switching the title back on TV.' I think we did it live on TV, if I'm not mistaken, maybe a pay-per-view, I'm a little foggy. I put Steve back over, he takes the belt. I'm not sure what else changed for the other guys. One of them was the Intercontinental Champion, one may have been the US Champion. Nothing changed for them, the only thing that was changing was me dropping this title back to Steve,” Undertaker recalled on his Six Feet Under podcast via Fightful.
“[Vince] always liked a babyface champion. I'm thinking, ‘These are guys that I respect the absolute most, and now we're in a room together, and it's basically all falling on me.' ‘Dude, you're not getting it done as champ, you're dropping the strap tonight. You two, get your sh*t together too or you're next.' That's how it went down, and that's how I left that room. I remember Triple H coming up to me and he goes, ‘You didn't deserve that.' ‘You know what, I don't think I did deserve that.”
While the Undertaker held the WWE World Champion six times over his Hall of Fame career, he never had the sort of prolific title reign that defined a career long-term, with none of his reigns ever hitting the five-month mark, his schtick was never really built on being an unbeatable champion who defends their belt multiple times per month as a fighting champion. No, with a gimmick centered around being dead, one has to wonder what is really gained by making Taker a champion at all, as what need does a ghost/zombie really have for a title belt anyway?
The Undertake endorses Goldust for the WWE Hall of Fame.
Elsewhere on his Six Feet Under podcast, The Undertaker discusses the Hall of Fame case for Dustin Rhodes, aka Goldust, to the WWE Universe.
In the most humble opinion of the “Deadman,” Dusty's son is a lock for the Hall of Fame, as “The Natural” had a fantastic run with The Fed.
“Absolutely. 100%. This is a semantics thing at this point. I would imagine at some point, down the road. I think his resume is Hall of Fame-worthy. Obviously, we know the one stickler right now [Dustin being in AEW] and I think at some point that goes away. Then I couldn’t see too much time probably going by that he wouldn’t be inducted,” Undertaker said via Fightful.
“He embraced that character. He made it his own. A lot of people talk about me and my character and making it my own but he did that with Goldust. Dustin comes from that traditional wrestling style too with his dad Dusty. But to go so far in another direction than Dusty or what Dustin had done up to that point, that’s a big roll of the dice.”
If there's one thing fans, pundits, and performers alike can say about Rhodes, it's that he was never afraid to fully commit to the bit, as he famously once asked Mr. McMahon to get breast implants in order to make his gimmick more believable. While he's now found a home in AEW, where he wrestles occasionally and has found a second act as a trainer and backstage producer under his own name sans any goofy gimmick, when he officially hangs up his boots for good, it's safe to say fans will celebrate the Goldust character forever as a member of the WWE Hall of Fame alongside his father and eventually his younger brother, too.