VIDEO: The Undertaker - Goldberg Staredown Was Actually Awesome

There are a lot of reasons to justifiably be down on some of WWE’s storytelling of late — for example, they make things up like the Wild Card rule in their own universe, which would be fine in and of itself, but then they forget the specifics and repeatedly break their own rules that they could have just written differently — but it still bears mentioning when they do something that is a lot of fun.

Goldberg and The Undertaker are facing each other in the Super Showdown on Friday in Saudi Arabia, and while the event itself still makes one feel queasy for a number of reasons these two are icons of an era that triggers nostalgia for a specific generation of fans.

Everybody knows that Goldberg and Taker are a combined 106 years old and it’s not going to be the same caliber of wrestling match that it would have been 20 years ago. However, WWE trades on surreality. They’ve done a good job of preserving Goldberg’s mystique since he returned to wrestling a couple years ago — it helps a lot that he looks incredible — and I dunno if there will ever come a moment where The Undertaker gongs don’t get the juices flowing.

Their promo on Smackdown Tuesday night falls under the less-is-more umbrella. There wasn’t a drawn out back and forth with corny lines trying to fill acreage of television time. Goldberg had high energy, chose his words carefully, and said his piece. In fact, this promo was likely shorter than WWE had planned because the announcers had to kill time for the last few minutes of the show. Nonetheless, for what it aimed to accomplish, it was powerful. I wasn’t sure if I’d be looking forward to this spectacle or not, but last night hooked me in.