Kane... feels like the biggest work of all time doesn't he? Was WM14 his best match? Dude gun to my head or 10 Kane match countdown and I'd struggle to name 10 Kane matches, let alone good ones. Dude's been around FOREVER and a DAY and yet. Remember Benoit's 04 run and the only PPV he had outside of Trips was... KANE. Kane strangely (I THINK) actually won his feud with Taker didn't he? I have this weird memory of Kane having a decent WHC reign on Smackdown and Taker never went over in that program where it mattered, right? It's Kane so I'm not gonna wiki and find this out. I was convinced Kane was the best character in WWF Attitude. Or was it War Zone?

Give some thoughts on Kane. Do you think he was ever on the table to end the streak?

Kane was 1 of the best utility players in wrestling history. The Big Red Machine was willing to try to make any storyline work. Some angles stunk, and some were great but he always made the best of it.

For what it's worth I really enjoyed See No Evil.

Terrible, borderline useless. Minus the new car smell up 'til WM14, he was the worst aspect of every program he was part of after that. Would love to see a Top 10 Kane match list. Would be one of the funniest things of all time. 

Had a great first few months beginning with one of the all time great debuts paying off months of hype. Tremendous look. Was booked perfectly. The red mood lighting gave his matches a unique aura. Neo Zeed once made an interesting post where he put Kane over at playing a monster by comparing him to the best Jason actor in the Friday the 13th series. Undertaker monster mashes always drew my dimes so Taker squaring off with his evil, undead, lightning shooting brother after months of hype was going to draw all the dimes. Even though Kane lost at Mania (which was the right call) they still kept him interesting with the Inferno Match and strong with the Vader mauling so I was fine with him beating Austin at KOTR after only 8 months in the role. Plus it’s hard to argue against Kane being the 2nd strongest character in the company kayfabe wise.

Then we got the Brothers of Destruction tease before he formed an odd couple team with XPac for most of 1999. They took something weird on paper and made it work. We can argue over whether or not humanizing Kane was a good idea, but I'll confess to being into it at the time. Kane also started doing a little more in the ring. The Kane/XPac feud should have been good. One of the most annoying guys in the business turning heel on a badass monster you wanted to see get his revenge is Booking 101. But that feud turned out to be long and boring. I was rapidly losing interest in Kane until he came back at the end of that epic 10 man tag in Texas. Then I quickly lost interest again at Wrestlemania 16. Never again would I have any desire in watching The Big Red Machine. 

Everything I saw after that was varying degrees of awful. That's a decade or two of crap. Kane was this black hole of suck where interesting wrestlers went to die. Low key one of my least favorite wrestlers of the 2000s. Special dishonorable mention goes to his 2003 run where he went krayzee and had back to back all time Wrestlecraptastic feuds with RVD & Shane. The worst. They tried recapturing that Kane/XPac magic a bunch of times with ever dwindling results until the Kane/Bryan team (or so I've heard). What was the payoff to May 19th again? Honestly don't remember. Also find it funny he never did learn how to do a decent Tombstone. And don't even get me started on his awkward, lumbering movements. How was this slug trained by the Malenkos?!? He just...wasn't very good. Didn’t have much beyond a nice uppercut. Highlights from that decade of suck include the genuinely hilarious Kanenites promo with Hogan & Rock and the Kane/Lita wedding.

Kane's greatest attribute from 2000 on was being a good company man- safe, reliable, easy to work with, over with the boys, not a complainer. Can't fault the guy for getting paid the big bucks for 20 years. Doesn't mean I wanted to watch him for 85-90% of that time.
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Since you guys asked and because I am a glutton for punishment...

12ish Kane Matches That Were Kinda Sorta Alright
*Only including singles & tags with one exception. Kane was likely the worst guy in any good multiman matches anyway. Best of BOBCORE > Best of Kane

vs. Undertaker- Wrestlemania 14
vs. Austin- KOTR 98
w/ XPac vs. D'Lo & Henry- Over The Edge 1999
w/ XPac vs. Acolytes- Raw August 99 x2
2001 Royal Rumble
vs. Albert- WWF tv mid 2001 x2?
vs. Test- No Mercy 2001
vs. Angle- Brawl on Smackdown before Wrestlemania 18. Not even an official match. But one of the few times I thought Kane looked genuinely good. 
vs. Benoit- Raw 2004 the night after some PPV
vs. Big Show- Raw early 2006?- the chain wrestling match. Probably not even good. But memorable!
vs. MVP- Smackdown late 2006- some sort of Street Fight or No DQ Match
Special Bonus Bout: w/ Fake Razor vs. Owen & Bulldog- IYH December 96

For people that watched Daniel Bryan's rise closer than me, confirm or deny my perception that Kane was absolutely used as a cooler to Daniel Bryan with the Team Hell No thing, like, can't have this midget getting over as a main eventer, stick him in a midcard comedy act tag team like he's fucking X-Pac. But they just couldn't stop Bryan, he got there, anyway. 

Awesome, and totally on brand, that Baker snuck a Fake Diesel match in there.

Apr 13, 2023 23:56:44 GMT Ed said:

Kane was 1 of the best utility players in wrestling history. The Big Red Machine was willing to try to make any storyline work. Some angles stunk, and some were great but he always made the best of it.

Exactly, either Kane or Big Show where she reliable go to for the new babyface champion to have a feud with.

It wasn’t going to be Meltzer 7 star match but it didn’t what it needed to do and got the babyface over.

I liked him after he took the mask off, got that GOAT theme and bullied Shane McMahon for a few months.

Everything else was awful.

Apr 14, 2023 4:39:32 GMT Kilgore said:

For people that watched Daniel Bryan's rise closer than me, confirm or deny my perception that Kane was absolutely used as a cooler to Daniel Bryan with the Team Hell No thing, like, can't have this midget getting over as a main eventer, stick him in a midcard comedy act tag team like he's fucking X-Pac. But they just couldn't stop Bryan, he got there, anyway. 

Awesome, and totally on brand, that Baker snuck a Fake Diesel match in there.

That was the initial perception, but once the WWE started pushing the vignettes, it was clear they saw something in him and he got way more over than he did when he was fighting for the title.

Bryan in the WWE is a whole other conversation that would be worth having at some point.

The biggest victim of Kane's return in 2011 was Zack Ryder. Ryder was the most over guy in the company not named CM Punk and they had Kane put him in a wheelchair. During that time, Cena hooked up with the girl he was crushing on, the WWE took his YouTube show and sanitised it for their platform and when Ryder made his triumphant return he got quicked squarely in the balls and lost his team the match at Wrestlemania.

It's funny how this photo was meant to represent a new hope for WWE fans and just about every talent got absolutely embarrassed in some fashion.

Cody - Gets oblitered by The Big Show at Wrestlemania, wins the title back as a fluke in a tables match only to drop it to perrennial mid-carder Christian.

Daniel Bryan - Becomes a cowardly boyfriend who cares more about the title than he does the well-being of his valet. In the end, drops the title to Sheamus in 18 seconds.

Zack Ryder - Gets destroyed by Kane, loses the title within minutes to Jack Swagger on Jack's 7th failed push.

Air Boom - Drop the tag titles on a house show, Evan Bourne can't give up the weed and is replaced by R-Truth

Beth Phoenix - Drops the title to Nikki Bella, realises after 6 years she's never going to get the opportunity to steal the show and quits the company

Punk got off lightly. The biggest crime is that they never pushed him as THE star of the show. He was still clearly in Cena's shadow the entire time, to the point they turned him heel because The Rock had to be the babyface when he won the title. Cena gets the rub from The Rock and despite building three Wrestlemanias around the program, Cena is fazed out of the main event by SummerSlam 2013.

The Kane/Xpac feud lasted way too long.

Kane really outstayed his welcome not long after he unmasked. It was like a different wrestler for me. I loved him 99-01 though.

It’s a crazy coincidence that after Chris Redacted and Daniel Bryan both overcome Triple H in Triple Threat matches at Wrestlemania’s XX and XXX that then they had to feud with Kane. Although I suppose Bryan had the whole Team Hell No backstory and it did lead to Brie/Steph and Nikki’s heel turn/run.


Big Pete Beth stayed around a bit longer after dropping the title, think it was a good 4-5 months but you’re totally spot on with the assessment why and I think that’s why she got her HOF induction earlier than most and why she’s always treated with great reverence and respect to kinda make it up to her. And she is one of the GOAT’s for me!

I enjoyed Kane's torture of Shane. Some of Shane's best work.

Jan 23, 2018 4:04:00 GMT kingoftheworld said:

And she is one of the GOAT’s for me!

The diva forum stans may have been wrong about Shelly Martinez, Angel Williams, Trenesha Biggers and Krissy Vaine, but at least they didn't miss with all their predictions!

Jan 23, 2018 4:04:00 GMT kingoftheworld said:

Big Pear Beth stayed around a bit longer after dropping the title, think it was a good 4-5 months but you’re totally spot on with the assessment why and I think that’s why she got her HOF induction earlier than most and why she’s always treated with great reverence and respect to kinda make it up to her. And she is one of the GOAT’s for me!

I was going to go into business for myself and explain that in storyline Vickie found out that Edge and Beth were an item, so she fired Beth but thought better of it. You're 100% right, I just wanted to wrap what happened to her afterwards in a nut-shell so her dropping the title to the Total Diva felt like a perfection summation of what happened not only to Beth but the division as a whole.

The initial character was obviously and is always going to be an extension of The Undertaker's lore. That in itself produced some big moments.

By the time I was really invested in WWF around 2000, Kane was essentially a great mid card gimmick - he was an absolute beast of a man at the time and most of his programs were essentially about how much of a monster he was and how he could literally kill a dweeby heel in seconds if he wanted. I still remember an image of Kurt Angle backing up all cocky like into him and realizing he gone and fucked up. Then he sort of hitched his wagon on Undertaker's again and the BOD were sort of the counter to The Power Trip for a moment until Invasion.

After 2001, his most notable storyline was the unmasking, but he had numerous big moments including going 1 up into a Tag Team TLC match on Raw and retaining the belts.

After Triple H raped a dummy - let's move on..

Kane's other big angle was his feud with Matt Hardy over Lita and his pregnancy. God, Matt is a bitch of a character really, twice his girl was taken from him in a matter of 2 years and he never really recovered.

Fast forward through years of shit. And he finally strikes gold again with Daniel Bryan.

Kane is often imitated, never duplicated. Every promotion runs a big masked monster character and tries to invent some silly back story and it never works.