Could WWE be humanizing the Undertaker for the Hall of Fame?

[Red Rain]

I've seen a few members speculating as to why the Undertaker's gear has 'suddenly' reverted to times of old.
At first I wanted to believe it had to do with his weight or conditioning.
The more I looked into it, the more its apparent to me that Undertaker is preparing us for his swan song.
He's likely to not only perform at Mania 32 but likely promote it unlike he has in recent memory.
Mania will be in his home state. With a golden opportunity to head the Hall of Fame class we could be seeing a side to him that dates back to his roots.

If this is true, he may begin a feud with a heel Sting as early as February. Seeds had been planted for an Anti-WWE Sting at Mania 31 but I may be looking too far into that one.

 

[Lackin]

I didn't think of it like that I just looked past it.

 

[The GOAT]

He's arguably been 'human' for the past five or six years. I can't think of the last thing he really did that could only be perceived as 'supernatural'. Even when they brought back the urn (the 'source' of Undertaker's superhuman powers) during the Punk feud, it was only in reference to the deceased Paul Bearer, whose ashes were now stored within it.

The modern-day Undertaker is really no different than the version of himself that he was portraying from 1996 to 1999 (except that Taker was a lot more talkative then than he is now.) He's still known as The Phenom, The Lord of Darkness, etc., etc. but he mostly talks, acts, and takes punishment like a normal human being... albeit much stronger than your average human being, but still. All this talk about taking people's souls or choke-slamming them into the depths of hell or whatever is pretty much all just metaphorical speech at this point.

In short, I agree with you, but I think this progression towards a more humanized version of himself has already long materialized.

 

[Red Rain]

He's arguably been 'human' for the past five or six years. I can't think of the last thing he really did that could only be perceived as 'supernatural'. Even when they brought back the urn (the 'source' of Undertaker's superhuman powers) during the Punk feud, it was only in reference to the deceased Paul Bearer, whose ashes were now stored within it.

The modern-day Undertaker is really no different than the version of himself that he was portraying from 1996 to 1999 (except that Taker was a lot more talkative then than he is now.) He's still known as The Phenom, The Lord of Darkness, etc., etc. but he mostly talks, acts, and takes punishment like a normal human being... albeit much stronger than your average human being, but still. All this talk about taking people's souls or choke-slamming them into the depths of hell or whatever is pretty much all just metaphorical speech at this point.

In short, I agree with you, but I think this progression towards a more humanized version of himself has already long materialized.

Point taken. My assessment is that the Undertaker will be present at the Hall of Fame next year to give a speech.
The person giving that speech won't be a gothic dead man, but a human being like you or me.
I'm merely saying that he's transitioning full circle into Mark Calaway and slowly setting aside the makeup to present a picture of his true self.

 

[The GOAT]

Point taken. My assessment is that the Undertaker will be present at the Hall of Fame next year to give a speech.
The person giving that speech won't be a gothic dead man, but a human being like you or me.
I'm merely saying that he's transitioning full circle into Mark Calaway and slowly setting aside the makeup to present a picture of his true self.

It's possible that this is why he initially chose to adopt the "American Badass" Biker persona back in 2000, too. That persona was a very true representation of Mark Calaway's real-life personality, and he said on "The Mania Of Wrestlemania" documentary back in early 2003 that he actually first began contemplating retiring "a couple of years ago", which would be just shortly after or before he went through this metamorphosis of character. It always seemed to me that he may have wanted to just be his true self when it was time to finally hang up the boots. Of course he obviously changed his mind about retirement then, but still, just an acute observation.

 

[Leo C]

I don't think the attire had much to do with it, I think it was just due to weight/conditioning/knee pads and such.