[1992-02-29-WWF-Superstars] Funeral Parlor: Jake Roberts & The Undertaker

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The Undertaker babyface turn is official. Great segment! Jake is just phenomenal in this, taking Undertaker down with a chair repeatedly, and every time Undertaker just keeps coming back again and again and again. It's a shame Jake was privately self-destructing at a time when he should have been entering a big money run. I always felt like this feud did way more to establish Undertaker as a top guy than the Hogan or Warrior feuds did.

[Ditch]

I think Undertaker established himself as a top guy the first night, it was just a matter of capitalizing properly. There's the time when he no-sold a title belt shot from Hogan; that was the sort of thing you never saw before.

[Tim Evans]

This reminded me of Rumble 93 where Taker was beaten up by Giant Gonzalez but kept getting up. Taker dragging the casket was awesome.

[shoe]

Just an amazing segment. Jake was a heels heel.

[Kevin Ridge]

This was excellent segment overall and did a great job of turning Undertaker face. Roberts slams casket lid shut on Taker's hand and lays out Bearer with a DDT. Undertaker gets up repeatedly after getting hit by a chair. Looks like he will stay down at times such as when the casket fell over but he just keeps coming after Jake and drags the casket from the stage all the way to the back after Jake. Too bad Roberts couldn't stick around a bit longer in WWF at this time.

[MikeCampbell]

Heel Jake was just so fucking great, he should have been turned back heel at least a couple of years before the WWF finally did it in '91. Jake is phenomenal here.

[WingedEagle]

I remembered Taker coming out of this as an uber face but it didn't take that way on rewatch. We've seen worse from Roberts in the Savage feud and while this clearly sets the stage for Mania, it seemed like even the live crowd wasn't entirely sure how to react as it was happening. Its a shame this was the end of the road for Jake as a heel here.

[PeteF3]

Has any Funeral Parlor in history not been predicted by Vince to be "most interesting"?

 

Yes, Jake is still on fire here, at first no-selling everything Bearer and the Undertaker try to do to intimidate him, springing his plan into action, and then eventually running away in fear. Paul Bearer eating a DDT on the set was a pretty crazy spot, too. UT is a babyface, and while I was pissed at this development at the time, there was just no way the WWF could postpone this any longer, the fan reaction was just too great. This is more or less the end of the Funeral Parlor, and just in time, because Bearer and his ever-increasing falsetto have just about jumped the shark.

[xlynwoodx]

I was pretty amazed at how close in height Jake was to the Undertaker. I always forget how tall he is. I enjoyed the 'zombie Undertaker' aspects of the segment, dragging the coffin behind him and never stopping. It's really sad what happened to Jake, he was an incredible heel.

[s1rweeze]

"You tell me! Who's side are you on?!"

 

"NOT YOURS."

 

Such an 80s action movie exchange there but such fantastic execution. High quality work from all involved here.

[garretta]

This has to be one of the most incredible no-selling performances I've ever seen from anyone, and I have no idea in hell how Mark Calloway did it. Maybe no-selling isn't quite accurate, but he sells as little as humanly (zombily?) possible. Repeated chair shots, tough punches, and you get the feeling that if Jake had DDTd him on top of the casket, it would have only stopped him for a second or two. All the while, he's dragging a coffin that's been closed on his hand, and even if he wasn't in pain, that thing must have been hard to haul around. For one of the few times in his life, Jake openly shows fear as we close the segment, because he now knows that Taker is truly nothing human.

 

Jake's clearly secondary here, and though his performance isn't bad, he's not anywhere near the level he was at just a couple of weeks ago. Most of that's by design, but I think Jake already knew he was going to be gone or close to it after Mania; what else could they have done with him? He wasn't going to challenge Savage for the World title after just having lost a feud to him, Hogan and Piper were both gone, and Bret and the IC belt would have been a bit of a comedown. I've heard the story that he demanded Patterson's job, and he may very well have, but he had to know that he wasn't going to get it with his personal history. It would have been an almost suicidal risk for Vince to take, and particularly at such an uncertain time, it simply wasn't going to happen.

 

I agree with Pete about Percy; now he's speaking entirely in falsetto, and he's becoming difficult to understand. Who the hell told him to play Paul Bearer that way, anyway, especially when it made him look and sound like a total idiot next to Calloway, who was playing Taker with the utmost seriousness and to the utmost effect? I'd almost have rather had Fuji and "You very dead, boy-san!" I'll give him credit for taking a DDT on the platform, though.

 

To announcer Vince, "very interesting" was code for "We have to show this, but I don't like it. In fact, I strenuously object to it as immoral, illegal, and unlawful. Save us, Hulkster, please!"

 

Curt's flat as a pancake here. No wonder in his voice, no "How in the world is he doing that?", no nothing. I haven't heard him call a match yet, but if he's like this all the time the WWF is still searching for Jesse Ventura's replacement and getting further away from the mark with each try.

[dawho5]

Taker really looks like a complete badass here. Dragging that casket around had to be exhausting, but he took multiple chairshots and punches in the process. How he managed to register only that first couple of barrages of chairshots and mostly ignore the rest is so great. Jake is great as usual, but he's showing fear by the end. Which is certainly justified by the way Undertaker was just coming at him regardless of what he did.