If there’s one thing I hate from a WWE crowd it’s a ‘please retire’ chant. They have been fired at many Superstars, such as Big Show, who were coming to the end of their tenure in the past and it’s usually due to creative decisions as well as the fact that they can no longer go in the ring like they used to.
Though some may be warranted, I don’t feel it is respectful to chant this at someone who puts their body on the line for our entertainment and has given up social life to tour with the company for 365 days a year.
That being said, I do believe there is an argument to be made when we believe a Superstar should hang up his boots. However, there is a respectful way of doing that, and that’s through discussion.
Kane is one such superstar that deserves this discussion as it is becoming more and more likely that he will not be featured heavily even when he does return from his hiatus due to long-term injuries.
However it’s worth nothing here that Glenn Jacobs, or Kane if you will, is now 49 years old, which is extremely impressive given the fact he was performing regularly on the SmackDown brand not 4 months ago.
Kane has had an impressive career of 20 years as his current character. He has been through changes but he has always been the Big Red Machine and has consistently instilled a sense of fear into every opponent he has faced.
Making his debut in the inaugural Hell In A Cell match which pitted Shawn Michaels against The Undertaker, he made an immediate impact as the then WWF made its move into the Attitude Era. A mystical character, said to have been burned as a child, Kane was supported by none other than the capable Paul Bearer.
Paul Bearer was one of the best talkers in the business and when you’ve got a character that can’t speak, that’s exactly what you need!
For weeks Paul had teased the debut of the Big Red Monster and when he was finally by his side, he portrayed the story about an illegitimate child that he’d had with The Undertaker’s mother so captivating for us!
As the story went, when he was a young child, The Undertaker set the family funeral home on fire, causing the death of his own parents and the scarring of his half-brother. Paul Bearer had then kept Kane in a mental asylum for much of his youth as he recovered from the burns received from the fire.
Undertaker thought his brother to be dead and originally pinned the arson on him, but later admitted it, shortly before his debut.
It’s like something from a horror film.
Growing up in this era, I can tell you this. I was whole-heartedly scared of Kane. I mean, I would quiver when he came on screen. As he built up to an epic battle with his brother at WrestleMania, I was absolutely captivated, as was the audience, by this family feud between two supernatural characters that were from out of this world.
The matches did not disappoint. Even after his defeat at WrestleMania, the feud continued between Kane and The Undertaker as they entered the first Inferno match at Unforgiven 1998. With the right framing it looks literally like a match from hell between two demons. You could not wish for a better character to complement the Undertaker.
It wasn’t just the storylines that allowed him to stay at the forefront of WWF programming though. He was an excellent ring worker and being able to work with a veteran like The Undertaker every night can only have helped his cause. He is currently helping to train Baron Corbin and teaching him how a big man should navigate the ring.
If Baron Corbin’s in ring work turns out to be as good as Kane’s, we’re in for a treat.
As mentioned above, Kane was unable to talk when he first debuted. However, as the years went on, he was slowly allowed to talk more and more. He was given a voice box at first before having ‘voice therapy’. By the millennium, Kane could talk without assistance.
Fast forward even more and he would lose the bottom half of his mask so his mouth was visible. I remember wondering then just how scarred Kane really was, from this fire?
The voicebox added an extra dimension to his character. The distorted sound that came from this contraption also made him scarier than he already was. It added to the supernatural abilities he was given as part of his character development.
Something that will stay with me for the rest of my life was when Kane set a cameraman on fire just to show he had powers to rival that of The Undertaker’s.
It was a sickening display that showed the emotionless nature of this 7 foot tall behemoth. All the elements - the hidden identity, the mechanical voice and the unnatural powers combined to make him truly evil.
It was the pinnacle of character and creative rating in this era. It couldn’t be better. To get not just one supernatural character over with the crowd in the form of The Undertaker, but Kane too, was fantastic work.
This led him to a feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin and he beat him in a First Blood match to gain the WWF Championship. However, this reign would only last a day as Stone Cold would win the title back the next night on Raw. For all the time the WWE invested in his character, I guess they didn’t trust this demonic monster to carry the belt and represent the company.
Despite a strong start to his career as a fire-obsessed, scarred individual, his character would be ruined multiple times by feuds that did not matter or were viewed as silly or abhorrent. In 2000 he had a great feud with Chris Jericho which stands out in my mind, but after this, no-one has really given Kane a decent rivalry.
He has been awarded the Worst Rivalry of the year by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter a total of 7 years. This is not particularly surprising though given that one of the storylines involved necrophilia and another involved knocking Lita up in a questionable fashion.
I won’t go through the others because quite frankly they are too boring to mention.
The major problems, however, started to happen mainly when Kane took his mask off.
In 2003, he had a good relationship with Rob Van Dam, with the two capturing the tag-team championships at one point. However, after losing to Triple H in a match for the World Heavyweight Championship, Kane had to unmask as per the stipulation of the match set by Eric Bischoff.
RVD stayed with Kane as moral support and paid for his troubles with a chokeslam.
It was a this point, we found out that the scars and the issues that Kane had been reported to have by Paul Bearer were in fact all a lie and the scars mentioned were in fact merely mental. Never have I felt so cheated by a television show in my life, and I’ve watched LOST.
It was the most character-destroying revelation I’ve ever seen. Kane now no longer had this supernatural air about him, nor did he have the intimidation factor of being a burns victim under a mask. We were scared of what we did not know.
For me, it was bad enough when he started talking but I understand that was necessary for promos and the like.
Kane made the most of it though and the unmasking brought a sadistic side out of him which led to Jim Ross being set on fire, Linda McMahon being tombstoned and a subsequent feud with her son Shane McMahon (another worst feud of the year winner I might add). Sadly, I still could not fully invest in the character.
Following this, Kane became what can only be described as a normal wrestler. There were a few moments along the way that still showed that link back the supernatural but he was no longer the dominant, scary force he had been.
In the 2001 Royal Rumble, Kane eliminated 11 men in the match; a record that stood for over 10 years before Roman Reigns eliminated 12 in the 2014 Royal Rumble. It was an awesome record and when watching it live, I remember really rooting for Kane as he had always been one of my favourite superstars and I wanted to see him headline WrestleMania.
The biggest highlight of his career following this was his World Heavyweight Championship win. After winning money in the Bank, Kane cashed in and beat Rey Mysterio for the title, becoming the first wrestler in WWE history to win the WWE Championship, the ECW Championship, and the World Heavyweight Championship.
He lost the championship to Edge though, and the rematch thereafter. He was then sidelined with injury for a few months before returning under the red mask he became so well known for initially.
And WWE actually had an opportunity to retcon the unmasking of the Big Red Monster and do over. BUt WWE being WWE, dropped the ball yet again.
In 2006, WWE introduced a masked figure that looked and acted exactly like old Kane. It would have been simple to swap wrestlers in this instance, say the unmasked version was a fraud and make a backstory for it. It would have made me so happy I can’t tell you.
As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I have never been a fan of the unmasked iteration of this character and I saw this feud of Kane vs. Kane as a wasted opportunity to bring back the fear factor to the persona. But I digress.
The new mask did not do much for Kane as a monster due to the dodgy wig that accompanied it and the fact you can see his real hair below the mask. The suspension of disbelief becomes harder and harder when you mess about with a character too much.
It’s the same reason I was not a fan of The Undertaker’s American Bad Ass gimmick. Luckily this only lasted a few years.
Kane’s character, on the other hand, was not able to recover from a storyline point of view but when it comes to success in the squared circle, still managed to stay at the forefront of programming, teaming with Daniel Bryan and capturing the WWE Tag Team Championships.
As a veteran and as a loyal employee of WWE for so many years, he would pretty much do whatever Vince asked of him I would imagine. Creating a comedy act with Daniel Bryan further devalued what his character is supposed to be, as he devolved into a huggable red monster that attends anger management classes.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed these segments and quite frankly, I looked forward to them like I looked forward to JeriKO segments. But I knew deep down that all I wanted was a destruction obsessed machine that was masked because of a horrific childhood incident.
The final piece to the Kane puzzle is the Director of Operations gimmick he was given. Kane was shown to have a split personality as he gave his mask to Stephanie McMahon to control. He would flit back and forth between ‘Demon Kane’ and the Director of Operations, however, with either persona oblivious to the other.
He did not really work as an authority figure but to be honest, there were a few other people that could have filled this role satisfactorily. The split personality was a good idea but it didn’t really come across as a legitimate storyline as much as a filler, even as we moved into a more reality driven era.
Nevertheless, Kane was still able to play the part of a big man on the ring extremely effectively. Though he has slowed down in recent years and shows signs of fatigue a lot more rapidly, this is to be expected of a man who is almost 50.
His last match on WWE television was in November of last year and I believe we can expect a return later on in the year. However I think the next run should be Kane’s last. He is already making waves in the political arena and it doesn’t make sense for him to be travelling with the company for 300+ days a year.
As the body gets older too, we know that it can take less punishment and can’t do the things that maybe it used to do. Kane is no spring chicken at the ripe old age of 49 and has done extremely well to be going at such a high level for so long.
With his character seemingly having nowhere to go the only real feud he could have is with The Undertaker, after which he should be looking to hang up his boots. As mentioned earlier in the article, he has been training Baron Corbin on how to effectively utilise his big man status and come across well in the ring.
One gets the feeling that at this stage in his career, perhaps Kane is much better put to use training the new generation and passing the knowledge that he has learnt from his storied career onto them.
I fully appreciate everything Kane has done for the business and there are many moments from WWE television that I will never forget thanks to that man. But I’m just not sure how many more memories he can make.
It is a shame, but I’d like to see him as a one-off attraction in the same vein as The Undertaker, The Rock or Stone Cold in the future.
This would not only help Kane recover from 20 years of being ground down physically in the ring, but it would also help maintain the nostalgia factor for the fans. It would be exciting to see the flames shoot up at WrestleMania and have him rescue a superstar, or see him team up once again with his on-screen brother The Undertaker, even fleetingly.
Whichever route the WWE decides to go, I just don’t want to see Kane get to the point where people are chanting ‘please retire’ at him.
Perhaps it is a little premature to be saying this now, but from the bottom of my heart, thanks for the memories Kane.
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