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Submitted by XanMan on Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 9:08 AM EST
 "Broken necks, splattered patellas, severed arteries: These are the things from which dreams are made."--Road Warrior Hawk I've got so many ideas and emotions rattling around in my brain about the last few weeks of the WWE and what I've watched of ROH from earlier in the year that weren't really touched upon in the last ETA and that caused me to have a kind of mental logjam trying to decide what to write about this week. In the end I decided to somewhat revisit one of the topics I touched upon last time, as I find it fascinating the way World Wrestling Entertainment is using Glen Jacobs, and conversely, his "brother," Mark Calaway. First of all, I want to say that I'm a huge fan of Calaway's. I always have been. I loved his character of "Mean" Mark Callous in WCW, and was thrilled when he moved to the WWF and became The Undertaker. At first I wasn't in love with the gimmick, but like most other WWF fans at the time, it grew on me, and Calaway has kept doing his thing for the last seventeen years. For the last 11 of those years, however, he hasn't been doing it alone. I can't think of a more tragic figure in the history of the WWF than Kane, and now that tragedy has simply turned to a profound disappointment. The most disappointing thing about it is that Jacobs himself has done nothing wrong. He's a fantastic athlete, easily one of the best big men of all time. In fact, I'd rank him second only to his storyline brother. Andre The Giant? Big and goofy, but hardly an athlete, at least when I saw him perform. The Big Show? Doesn't ever seem to be interested for too long in his career or in taking care of himself. I can't think of anybody else that would even be able to lay a claim to the spot. I know a lot of you are going to say El Gigante, and granted, he was very, very impressive, but being impressive as a major fucking flop does not come close to being an outstanding performer who many people feel should be a multi-time World Champion by now. Am I sure? Yes, I'm sure. Thanks for asking. Despite being the second best big man of all-time, he lives in the shadow of the best, however, because for his entire time as a member of the WWF/WWE, Calloway has been a part of the company, as well. Sure, he's taken breaks to keep his body fresh and relatively healthy, but he's never not been a WWF/WWE performer and Kane has forever been known as The Undertaker's little brother. That's not likely to change. No, unless Calaway pulls a Benoit or something close to it, Jacobs is destined to be seen in that role throughout the rest of his career with the WWE. I remember back in 2002 when there was a large surge to unmask Kane. Back then I was just starting out as a columnist and wrote an elaborate scenario for how he could be unmasked and become a big star. Obviously, that never happened. Instead, they decided to have his unmasking be part of the much maligned Katie Vick angle, and it certainly seems to have been a big mistake to unmask the Big Red Machine. See, there's no longer any intrigue with Kane. Prior to his unmasking on the June 23, 2003 edition of RAW, he truly was a machine. While he clearly was also a man, there was a sense of mystery about him, and because of the nearly total covering of his body by his red and black tights he didn't seem to be quite human. Once that mask was removed in that incredibly poorly planned scene, the character of Kane changed. No longer was he a badly burned individual hiding his scars behind a mask, he was simply an ugly toad of a man who believed he had terrible scars. I know I'm probably no beauty to look at, either. That really isn't the point. What I'm trying to get at is that an angle that could have done so much to refresh Kane over the long haul, instead of just for a few months, ended up effectively killing the character. They can call the current character "Kane," and he may not be played by a different guy, but he certainly isn't the same. "Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."--Mark Twain In the most recent Northern Star, I compared Kane to Psylocke because of his relationship to a more well-known sibling and the fact that he used to look quite different as a superstar the way Psylocke used to look quite different as a superhero. I still feel the comparison is valid, but that was an approach from the angle of having to decide which member of the WWE roster fit the characteristics of a member of The Uncanny X-Men best. If you approach it the opposite way, though, and scan the Marvel Universe to see which member best fits Kane's characteristics, there's an associate of the team of X-Men during the same Fall of the Mutants period that actually comes pretty damned close. Her name? Madelyne Prior, and she wasn't a mutant or even really a person, as it turns out.--by which I mean she was not born, she was created from the cells of one of the original X-Men: Jean Grey. That's right, Ms. Prior was a clone. She was created by one of the oldest mutants in the Marvel Universe, Mr. Sinister. Sinister had been fascinated with both Jean and her former lover, Scott Summers, since they were young children and once he believed Ms. Grey dead, he used the cells he had left over from when she was a child to grow a clone of her in his laboratory. Originally he believed her to be merely human and was going to dispose of her, but when she awoke and harnessed a power of the Phoenix Force, destroying her containing pod, he injected her with false memories and set her up as an employee of Summers' parents as a pilot. Sinister knew that because Madelyne didn't just look like Cyclops' fiery redhead and carried all of her genetic material that Summers would fall in love with her and in so doing would create a progeny that Sinister would then steal for his own twisted ends. Madelyne would turn out to be so powerful that sinister couldn't control her and would end up nearly sending the entire Earth into limbo. Glen Jacobs, of course, is not a clone of Mark Calaway, but it is interesting that after his role of Isaac Yankem was dropped he had two character returns. The first was as the second Diesel, as he was contracted to copy all the characteristics that Kevin Nash made (in)famous while portraying Big Daddy Cool. That, obviously, didn't last too long, as despite being an excellent concept, it was apparently ahead of its time, as the crowd rebelled against the new Diesel and the new Razor and the two characters were scrapped, never to be seen again. Then the writers came up with a concept of having the Undertaker have a brother that he believed to be deceased. Thing is that this wasn't just any brother, and it obviously wasn't a twin brother, but they do have unnerving similarities. For instance, they share the same first name, though with different spellings, as when he joined the WWF, Calaway was originally billed as "Cain The Undertaker." Also, both are big, ominous figures that appear to wield dark magic. While Kane is neither the clone, nor the twin of The Undertaker, it's obvious that he was intended as a dark version of the fan favorite the Undertaker eventually became, as he was sick and twisted by his life of being sheltered due to his horrible disfiguring due to the fire that his brother believed he perished in. In a way, it was his brother, as much as his daddy, Paul Bearer, and the fire that created Kane, because Kane was led to believe that the Undertaker had set the fire to try and kill his brother; and that his brother believed him to be dead and didn't care about him. So, like Madelyne rebelling against Sinister and attempting to destroy him for his sins, Kane returned from what was supposedly the dead, intending to destroy The Undertaker, and like the character of Jean's clone was created by the writers in order to have her begin Inferno and attempt to destroy the world, Kane was created just to give The Undertaker some more back story and a new opponent. Unlike Madelyne, who died because of her attempt, Kane continues to exist in the WWE, well past his original expiration date. "It's not the size of the fighter, it's the size of the fight he will bring."--Low Ki But exist is really all Kane does now. I loved the period of time in which Eric Bischoff was the general manager of RAW, because just like when he was the president of WCW and the figurehead of the NWO, he portrayed a cocky, arrogant, power hungry bastard. Kind of like Mr. McMahon, except with more attitude, because he was always spending other people's money, and had been given control of another person's playground in order to wreak as much havoc as he possibly could. Bischoff's motto now is apparently "controversy creates cash," and there's no question that his character exemplified that each and every week on RAW. As I said, I loved it, but I didn't love every single minute of it. Why? Because there was always that part of the program that was very predictable. Whenever Bischoff had a problem with a lower level babyface on the brand, he would tell him that his match was coming up next and his opponent would be--cue deep, ominous voice--KANE. I believe that little fallback option was used way too much, and thus Kane was used too often in that capacity. It's still used somewhat now, with Kane being the guy that faced John Cena this week in basically the same manner, though it wasn't a general manager directing the action this time. The problem with trying to portray Kane as a monster now is that he just isn't. I can't remember the last time he won a match, much less an entire feud, and the fact that recent detention attendee, Rey Mysterio dominated him in their series of matches just adds further fuel to the fire. Kane is a joke now; he has been for years. Wasn't the last time he had any relevance at all when he forced Lita to marry him and did some kind of face turn against Edge for stealing his wife from him? That was over 3 years ago, and it seems much longer. When I see someone booked against Kane now, it doesn't interest me because I already know the outcome. When you already know the outcome, the story loses meaning. I believe fervently that the burlap sack Kane brought to the ring for weeks prior to SummerSlam should not have contained Rey Mysterio's mask. That was a stupid idea; even stupider than the one to have Rey win every match of their feud. These so-called wrestling writers that the WWE employs need to try to understand something. If a wrestler wins every match in a series against another wrestler, it's not a feud; it's a domination. People might like seeing Rey Mysterio "overcome the odds" against bigger wrestlers, but when he wins every match against a guy Kane's size who loses to everyone anyway, he's not really overcoming the odds as the series, he's simply doing what's expected. The best estimate of present and future performance is past performance, after all; any baseball fan can tell you that, and The Prince of All Media, Max Kellerman certainly would. In order for the mystique--not the marvel character--to have ever been present in Mysterio's "battles" with Kane, there must have been some expectation from the audience that Kane could lose. There wasn't because he never wins. Meanwhile, Mysterio always wins despite the odds against him. I understand the theory behind pushing Mysterio; that he brings in the latino audience that nobody else really can, but I find this theory to be bullshit. I know I'm not the only fan--or even the only LOP columnist--to be irritated with Mysterio's constantly overcoming the odds or the fact that he's seemingly incapable of speaking only in English when he's doing one of his outstanding promos. Furthermore, I'm not the only one that would much rather see Kane have a main event level spot than the little midget Mexican. When all is said and done, Jacobs is not being judged on his skills, but rather on the fact that he's never been the best big man in the company. It's his bad luck that he's a WWE performer at the same time as the best big man of all time. But why does this have to be a limitation? The Atlanta Braves had two of the greatest starting pitchers in history in their rotation at the same time and managed to use them both expertly. Most consider Greg Maddux to be a better pitcher than Tom Glavine, but for much of the time they were together, they were the two best pitchers in the game and got equal time and opportunity. "Not every story has a happy ending."--Chris Jericho So, why is it that the WWE can't do the same? Yes, they are different sports, but you don't see them cutting themselves off at the knees when it comes to different performers of the same build and skill-set, such as The Rock or Triple H or The Great Khali and The Big Show. What about when it comes to brother vs. brother? They did a pretty good job of pushing Owen Hart as an upper midcard perfomer while his brother Bret was in the main event, Edge and Christian were at the same level during almost the entire time they were in the organization together(and it looks like Edge is pushing them to bring Christian in as his partner,) and right now Matt Hardy went right from being the United States Champion to winning the ECW Championship and Jeff Hardy is continually one of the top contenders for the WWE Title. So why is it that while The Undertaker has had memorable feud after memorable feud, and been allowed to constantly refresh his character and move-set that the only change Kane was allowed to make was half-assed at best? The bottom line is that Kane is useless to the WWE in his present state. Am I being too harsh? Not unless you really believe that either Rey Mysterio or Kane are in a better position in the eyes of the fans than they were before the draft. Any takers? No, I didn't think so. Rey is a former World Heavyweight Champion; easily the worst in history, sure, but a former World Heavyweight Champion, nonetheless, and has won just about every feud he's ever been a part of. Meanwhile, Kane has held the WWE Championship once for less than 24 hours, and hasn't won a non-preliminary match or a feud of any kind since destroying Snitsky for killing his baby. I don't know how Glen Jacobs feels at the end of a day of performing. Maybe he kicks back in an easy chair thinking about how lucky he is. It's certainly possible. In a sense, he lives a life of fame and celebrity, after all. But isn't it also possible--even likely--that he feels a sense of resentment? If so, who could blame him? He's always been an excellent performer and a good company man, and what is his reward for that? His character is a walking Robert Frost poem, and his legacy is probably always going to be that as the runner-up to Mark Calaway. Probably. It's not such a bad life, or a bad career, I suppose, but it could have been so much more. It's not too late to change the perception of Kane, though, because despite what we've been programmed to believe from years of watching McMahon programming, he really is a big, strong, tall, demented monster. The man has physical characteristics and abilities that set him apart from the average man, just as the character has a devious and demented mind that separates him from the pack. Now is the time for the organization to take advantage of these traits in a way that they haven't for years. For years, people have been speculating on how long The Undertaker can continue wrestling, with it seeming likely his last match will come at Wrestlemania XXVI. Here's what I propose: One last feud between Kane and The Undertaker, but this time, The Undertaker isn't clearly the good guy. This time, they battle off and on for almost a year, but halfway through it, Taker wins a Hell in the Cell inferno match that ends up buring Kane again; scarring him for "real" this time, and Kane is forced to go back to his masked persona, and while Kane resents his brother for disfiguring him, he also thanks him for bringing out the monster in him, and at their third Wrestlemania confrontation, he finally gets over the hump, defeats The Undertaker, and ends both The Streak and his career. A feud and a story that echoes that between Michaels and Flair and also that between Stone Cold and The Rock, to be sure, but also one that would set Kane up to finally have a good run as a monster with the organization. One that would give a rub to a man/monster who really needs it and could give us the chance to revel in the glory that a true monstrous Kane would bring. After all, once Taker is gone, shouldn't his brother finally get his shot in the spotlight? That's what every shadow craves. And maybe it's okay that sometimes...only sometimes...they get to feed. Long days, pleasant nights Points of Light These are the columns that I believe to be the best posted in the LOP Columns Forum over the last 14 days. I suppose you could call them plugs, but these are the recent columns I see as shining examples of stellar work: Nothing But Net #8 by Mavsman The Shinobi Series #12 by Joey Shinobi In The Clutch w/Mighty Casey: The Other Brother by Mighty Casey Kaos Engine V by Skaos You can send any comments by email to me at XanManX@hotmail.com with the words "Northern Star" or "feedback" in the subject line or you can click here to leave feedback if you're a member of The Lop Forums. The Northern Star will rise again, until then... Be Well
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