J.J. Dillon: The Undertaker Didn’t Need The World Title To Be A Special Attraction
J.J. Dillon said he wasn't surprised The Undertaker won the WWF Championship but said The Undertaker was a big enough attraction to not need the world title to draw a crowd.
On “The List & Ya Boy” podcast, the former Four Horsemen manager admired The Undertaker’s ability to draw a massive pop doing some of his signature moves and poses.
“The Undertaker, to me, I have so much respect for him professionally and as a person because he is a great guy, but when you think about what he did as that character, he didn’t do much but what he did, he did well," Dillon said. "He wasn’t the first one to walk on the top rope as big as he was. Don Jardine (a.k.a. The Spoiler) walked the top rope long before The Undertaker did. That spot where he would do something devastating and he would lay there and all of a sudden, when he would sit up, that roof went off the building. He morphed over time, he got more tattoos, he became a biker for a while. It was still The Undertaker, but it was still something like more tools in the toolbox, where he was still doing the same things, but it wasn’t a rehash of the same old thing forever.”
Dillon said he was not surprise that The Undertaker had a WWF Championship reign in just about one year after debuting at the 1990 Survivor Series. Dillon did say that booking The Undertaker was more so that he would be considered a special attraction on tour to add special value for tours.
“Wrestling is an athletic soap opera. It’s 52 weeks a year and it’s never ending,” Dillon said. “Everything we see with every television show, it has a season, it has a break and then they would come back. It tries to recapture that audience, but wrestling never ends. So that’s a challenge from the creative side to avoid the big highs and the big lows. You’re better off if you kind of keep a steady thing and it still is going to get cyclical at times where you get a little bump and someone really catches fire or all of a sudden, things run their course faster than you would think and you don’t have something else hot and ready. Andre the Giant was a great drawing card, but you didn’t want him chasing the world title, because you wanted the world title on somebody else and you have two things to put on the marquee: a title match and “The Eighth Wonder of the World” Andre the Giant. I think The Undertaker would be a better example, yes he did have that short run as the titleholder and I don’t know where Vince’s head was at the time and why he did that. That was never going to be the focus of what his goal was: being the world champion. He was to be The Undertaker.”
The Undertaker first won the title in the 1991 Survivor Series when he beat Hulk Hogan for the title. He lost the title a week later to Hogan at the This Tuesday In Texas pay-per-view. You can listen to Russo’s comments in the video above at around the 1:03:00 mark. “The List & Ya Boy” podcast, starring Fightful owner Jimmy Van and Fightful managing editor Sean Ross Sapp can be seen live on Fightful every Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET.
