When did 'Taker fall off a cliff in-ring?

[Deleted]

Even when he was just a part timer, he was putting on straight up bangers with Shawn, the matches with Brock, etc.

Then it's like he turned into straight up doo doo butter practically overnight. 

Was it one particular injury that never healed right, or just father time? 

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

Part of it was being in there with Shane but that was the match where I thought he was a lot slower and seemed hurt and it was really all downhill from there.

[ElmerFudd]

My favorite character of his was Ministry Taker in 99 but that was his worst he ever looked in shape and the matches were not good at all. Was good again after he took some time off and came back in 2000. Don't think he really declined until WMXXX when Lesnar ended the streak, I know he got concussed but from the start the match seemed off.

[XIII]

He had been busted physically for a long time, but once Brock took the streak Taker just fell all the way apart. Just a mountain of cumulative injuries and he was slow, frail, and could barely do a lot of his signature spots. It was an embarrassment from XXX on.

[Jindrak Mark]

Dec 8, 2022 12:05:36 GMT -5 "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik said:

Part of it was being in there with Shane but that was the match where I thought he was a lot slower and seemed hurt and it was really all downhill from there.

Yeah that one was the point of no return for me in thinking he should hang it up.

The streak ending match with Brock in 2014 was really boring but he was apparently concussed early in the match. The next year too the match with Bray wasn't great but was hampered due to Bray I think breaking his foot or something the week of the match. A few months later he actually had two shockingly great matches with Brock at Summerslam and Hell in a Cell that had me thinking okay maybe he's not finished.

That match with Shane was so bad though. And the amount of suspension of disbelief it took to buy Shane going toe to toe with Undertaker for 30 minutes inside the cell was ridiculous. Then the Roman match the next year was terrible too. They learned their lesson and only let him go 4 minutes with Cena the next year. And the Styles thing wasn't really a match.

[Fake Jesus]

The streak match with Brock was the cliff point. Yes, he had good matches after that, but those good matches were very much tumbling down the cliffside and trying to grab on to rocks. It was clearly leaving him. The Shane match I thought was continuing in this tradition, just much lower to the ground. By the Reigns match he was an embarassing, shambling wreck.

[Push R Truth]

I think it's hard to pinpoint because he had some bad stretches even back in the 90's where I assume he was working while injured. If I was forced to give an answer I'd probably say anything after The Streak was mostly his ass lumbering around, looking sloppy and botching shit.

[Magic knows Black Lives Matter]

He really ain’t been right since he got his bell rung right before the streak ended, tbh

[Bang Bang Bart]

Dec 8, 2022 12:07:46 GMT -5 ElmerFudd said:

My favorite character of his was Ministry Taker in 99 but that was his worst he ever looked in shape and the matches were not good at all. Was good again after he took some time off and came back in 2000. Don't think he really declined until WMXXX when Lesnar ended the streak, I know he got concussed but from the start the match seemed off.

2001 Taker was back to lousiness up until he turned heel at the end of the year.

[bluebeach25]

If we look at things he is basically not the same since Post-WM 29. The Lesnar match was absolutely horrible and the main reason was the fact he got concussed early on, but even if not he was in no shape that Year. The only matches that he looked in shape from then on were the rematches with Lesnar in 2015. I really thought both the Summerslam and HIAC Matches were pretty good. Then at WM 32 he looked in no shape and it got worse and worse from then on..

[msc]

Mania 29 was his last great match. Mania 30 was marred by the concussion. Match 31 was just decent. 2017 was the obvious "oh, he's utterly done" moment but there were heavy hints in 2014-16.

Age comes to us all.

[Alice Syndrome]

I think the downslide started when he broke his face against Rey and just wasn't a full timer after that, and then aside from 2015 it was all downhill after Brock at Mania

[Facetious]

I think WM30. He had two good matches after WM29 with Punk and those were both against Brock at Summerslam and HIAC.

In my opinion, he should have had the HIAC against Brock at WM32 and then called it a career.

[Legion]

I think with the right people, he could have likely had a few more even as late as the last few years, possibly even if he trained and came back tomorrow, with the right guy he could likely still get a good showing.

But the opponents they gave him just helped highlight how old he had gotten, and once the streak was gone, it was almost like - even if he may never admit it - his fire was gone.

That was his last big thing to give, and I think even he felt they wasted it.

[Allie Kitsune]

Dec 8, 2022 14:01:43 GMT -5 Alice Syndrome said:

I think the downslide started when he broke his face against Rey and just wasn't a full timer after that, and then aside from 2015 it was all downhill after Brock at Mania

I somehow forgot that he was ANOTHER victim of Rey's Knee Brace of Doom.

Rey broke like 4 people's faces with that thing, I think.

[Rudy Gobert Fadeaway]

The Hell in a Cell match with Brock in 2015 is the last match of his that I thought was genuinely great. Brock took dude's balls like an orchiectomy specialist.

[joeiscool]

I wouldn't say he fell off a cliff. He just had good and bad matches after the streak ended.

However, I'm always surprised in a sport like wrestling why guys don't work around their limitations more. He's a character that does literal magic sometimes why not do something where he does more of that than needing to get Jack Hammered by Goldberg?

[DrBackflipsHoffman]

1990 - 1999, 2000 - 2009 and 2011 - present

[mcstoklasa]

2016.

[Some Guy]

Dec 8, 2022 12:07:46 GMT -5 ElmerFudd said:

My favorite character of his was Ministry Taker in 99 but that was his worst he ever looked in shape and the matches were not good at all. Was good again after he took some time off and came back in 2000. Don't think he really declined until WMXXX when Lesnar ended the streak, I know he got concussed but from the start the match seemed off.

Hold on, when was he good in 2000? He was AWFUL in 2000, maybe even worse than he was in 99.

His career was basically a series of cycles. He was just kind of a large guy in feuds with other large guys and never had much of a good match from 91 to 96 or so. In 96 into 98, his ring work got a lot better working against guys like Shawn, Foley, Austin, Vader, Bret, and pretty much the only good Kane match he had. Then right after Summerslam 98 more or less, his ring work got awful until mid 2002 or so. He had some blips in there (the RVD hardcore match was kinda fun, the HHH/Flair Mania matches were solid in their weird ways) but he had absolute clunkers all around otherwise. Something in the point in his Undisputed title run where he started facing Jeff Hardy and Kurt Angle woke him up after being shit for 4 years, and he started being generally pretty solid with his usual ups and downs for another 5 years or so. He was probably at his peak as MMA Taker in 2007 or so, and then he sort of evolved into Epic Match Man in 2009 where he tried to constantly mimic what he did with Shawn in 2009 or he had dogshit matches (like the Punk feud, the Kane feud for shitty ones or the rare blip like the solid Rey match). For the rest of his career after that, it was pretty much just that.

So really, Taker's career is impossible to go into falling off a cliff mode. There's probably no wrestler with more prolonged periods of being complete garbage then solid for a while.