The Undertaker Describes What Makes An Effective WWE World Champion

Throughout his career, The Undertaker has always been a larger than life figure in the wrestling [...]

Throughout his career, The Undertaker has always been a larger than life figure in the wrestling industry. Perhaps, the most larger than life character in wrestling history. As such, he rarely held the WWE world championship due to the fact that he didn't need it to establish himself as a main eventer. Most of his title reigns came later in his career, as between his debut in 1990 and WrestleMania 13 in 1997, he only held the title for a period of six days in 1991.

Taker would win the WWE title at WrestleMania 13 in 1997, and also have championship victories in 1999 and 2002. He held the later created WWE World Heavyweight Championship on three occasions, in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

The profile of what makes a world champion has changed a lot since Taker's debut in 1990. During an interview this week with Yahoo, he was asked if a world champion needs to be a bigger individual versus someone smaller in stature.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be a big guy big guy, but we have stretched the realms of reality sometimes with some of our champions," Undertaker said. "When you see some of the guys that they have to work with, it's like, OK, I get it, we're sports entertainment — BUT. My whole goal when I went to the ring, I don't care if you're smart, not smart, whatever, when I'm in the ring I want people thinking, 'This dude's legit.' If I hit somebody, I want people in the front row going, 'No, dude, he hit him. I don't care what happened in the match before, he just lit him up. This is on.' So it's hard because we're kind of starting to get a little bit of an influx of big guys, but it's just kind of where– because there's so much new talent, you can't put the title on a guy just because he's big and back in the day, man, we had tons of big guys that could go and could carry it and do that."

He continued, "So it's more of a guy that kind of fits in the middle of the road. A guy that you'll believe working with a big guy but can also work with a little guy. But there are certain guys that have had — I won't bring in names — but it's just like, yeah, I just don't buy it. I don't buy this as my champion. It's not any fault of their own, other than they're physically not able to match up against certain people."

WWE will be celebrating The Undertaker's 30 year anniversary with the company next weekend at the Survivor Series.

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