I’ll be damned, Undertaker really stayed retired

A little over one year ago, Survivor Series 2020 was advertised as the Final Farewell of the Undertaker. His appearance at that November event closed out the night. It was a rather strange segment where his closest wrestling peers each received separate entrances before suddenly disappearing and never interacting with the Dead Man. Undertaker then said goodbye to a ThunderDome full of heads on monitors and piped in audio chants, rather than actual live fans. That’s not how anybody drew it up years ago.

Earlier in 2020, WWE aired a five part documentary series, Undertaker: The Last Ride, detailing his years-long struggle with ending his career on his terms. At the end of the series, the Undertaker said he had no desire to get back in the ring, but he also said the door was always open to an emergency call from Vince McMahon. And we know Vince McMahon doesn’t hesitate to make those emergency calls when there is money to be made. In other words, plenty of folks were skeptical that the Undertaker was really retired.

He has more directly used the word “retired” and shut the door in several interviews since then. But pro wrestlers fake retire all the time, right?

Well here we are at the end of 2021, and the Undertaker has wrestled in zero matches this year. It’s the first year since he debuted with WWF at Survivor Series 1990 that the Dead Man has not competed in a match.

Undertaker’s days as a full time WWE roster member wrapped up in 2010, but he still managed to wrestle in 26 total matches across the ten years spanning 2011 through 2020, per CageMatch. A few of those years only saw him wrestle one time (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016), but 2021 is his first year with zero matches on the ledger. His final match was the critically acclaimed Boneyard match against AJ Styles in the main event of WrestleMania 36 night one in 2020.

I’ll be damned, the Undertaker really stayed retired.