Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Scariest Wrestler... Kane

The polls are closed, and the scariest wrestler is Kane! It was a close poll, only between 2 wrestlers, Kane and The Boogeyman. So honorable mention to The Boogeyman.

Glenn Thomas Jacobs (born April 26, 1967) is a Spanish-born American professional wrestler and actor better known by his ring name, Kane. He is signed to WWE, appearing on its SmackDown brand, but is currently inactive due to injury.

Jacobs has accumulated 17 championship accolades during his WWE career. He is a three-time world champion, having won the WWF Championship once, the ECW Championship once, and the World Heavyweight Championship once (tied for third longest reign in history) making him the first of two people ever to hold all three WWE world titles. He is also a two-time WWE Intercontinental Champion, a one-time WWF Hardcore Champion, and a twelve-time Tag Team Champion; winning the WWE Tag Team Championship (once with The Big Show), the WCW World Tag Team Championship once (with The Undertaker), and the World Tag Team Champion nine times (twice with Mankind, X-Pac, and The Undertaker; and once with The Hurricane, Rob Van Dam, and The Big Show). Jacobs is the third Grand Slam Champion in WWE history. In addition to championships, he is a one-time Money in the Bank winner, also he has become the quickest man to cash in the briefcase. Kane currently holds several records in the Royal Rumble match, including: most eliminations in a single Royal Rumble with 11, most Royal Rumble match appearances with 15, most consecutive appearances in the match with 13 from 1999 to 2011, and the quickest elimination of another competitor at 1.8 seconds.

Yankem
Jacobs made his television debut as a heel with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as Dr. Isaac Yankem DDS, Jerry Lawler's private dentist, in a vignette on the June 26, 1995 edition of Raw. He wrestled Bret Hart for Lawler on many occasions; during their first match at SummerSlam 1995, Jacobs hung Hart by twisting him in the top and middle ropes by his neck. Yankem's team were unsuccessful in an elimination match at Survivor Series. He participated in the 1996 Royal Rumble, but spent the majority of 1996 as a jobber to the stars, including The Undertaker, Jake Roberts and The Ultimate Warrior. Jacobs sported this gimmick until September 1996.

Fake Diesel
 In October 1996, play-by-play announcer Jim Ross introduced Rick Bognar as "Razor Ramon" and Jacobs as "Diesel" as part of a storyline mocking the departure of former employees Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, and also as an attempt to turn Ross into a heel. The Jim Ross heel turn proved unpopular and was dropped almost immediately, and despite receiving a WWF Tag Team Championship match against Owen Hart and The British Bulldog at the In Your House 12: It's Time pay-per-view, the gimmick's television lifespan lasted only until the 1997 Royal Rumble, where Jacobs was the second-to-last participant (with the exception of Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was previously eliminated by Bret Hart but the officials did not witness the elimination, so he re-entered the ring). Jacobs was then taken off television in order to build the debut of Kane, but continued to work live events as "Diesel" until mid April.

WWE Championship
Following the Undertaker's WWF Championship victory over Sycho Sid at WrestleMania 13, Paul Bearer attempted to reunite with The Undertaker after a long period of mutual hostility, using the threat of revealing The Undertaker's "biggest secret". When The Undertaker refused to once again become aligned with Bearer, Bearer began tormenting him by telling him that his long-lost brother, Kane (later revealed as Bearer's son, and the Undertaker's half-brother), was coming to the WWF to challenge him. After months of hype and speculation, Jacobs re-debuted in the WWF as Kane at Badd Blood: In Your House on October 5 (coincidentally held in St. Louis, MO, where Jacobs originally debuted in wrestling), costing The Undertaker the victory in the first-ever Hell in a Cell match with Shawn Michaels. As Kane, Jacobs originally wore a mask, sported long hair, and wore red and black ring attire that almost entirely covered his body. Kane and The Undertaker feuded with one over another the following year, during which time their history vis-à-vis one another was expounded. Jacobs won his first match as Kane against Mankind at Survivor Series. 


See No Evil
In weeks prior on Raw, Kane had randomly attacked other wrestlers including Ahmed Johnson, Road Warrior Hawk, the Hardy Boyz, Flash Funk, and Mankind's alter ego Dude Love. The Undertaker initially refused to face him, saying he would not fight his own "flesh and blood". After a brief partnership, Kane betrayed his brother when he cost him the WWF Championship; he made a run-in in The Undertaker's WWF Championship title match with Shawn Michaels at the Royal Rumble. After the match, Kane locked The Undertaker in a casket and set it on fire, though it was later revealed that Undertaker managed to escape the casket without being seen before Kane set it on fire. This provoked The Undertaker into returning to face Kane at WrestleMania XIV on March 29. Kane was defeated by The Undertaker after three Tombstone Piledrivers. After the match Kane and Paul Bearer attacked The Undertaker.
Brothers Of Destruction
They continued to feud until Unforgiven on April 26, when The Undertaker defeated Kane in an Inferno match. In this match, Paul Bearer tried to help Kane by attacking The Undertaker; however, at one point of the match, as Kane was retreating backstage, Vader forced Kane back towards the ring, and The Undertaker attacked them both by jumping over the ring ropes surrounded by fire.

On May 19, Bearer was revealed to be an employee at the funeral home in Death Valley owned by The Undertaker's parents. When Kane and The Undertaker were children, The Undertaker "accidentally" burned down the funeral home, killing their parents and hideously scarring Kane both physically and mentally. The Undertaker thought Kane had been dead for years after the fire and sometime in Kane's life when he was a child Kane "accidentally" killed a German Shepherd because one day a German Shepherd jumped up at him and was trying to kill him, so he grabbed it by the throat to try and push it off him, but Kane never realized how tight his grip was, and as soon as he did he let go of his grip but the dog was already dead. So he buried the dog so no one would find out what happened. During an episode of Raw taped in Long Island, Kane and Bearer ostensibly exhumed the parents' bodies and brought them to the arena. Bearer, who survived the fire, hid Kane in a mental asylum as he grew up and went on to form an alliance with The Undertaker. 

World Champion
After suffering mistreatment at the hands of The Undertaker, Bearer opted to bring Kane into the WWF in order to gain vengeance upon The Undertaker. Kane is portrayed as being psychotic, demented, extremely violent, twisted, disturbed, unstoppable, isolated and at peace with insanity. Like his half-brother, Kane is supposedly able to summon fire and bolts of lightning at will, which is displayed as pyrotechnics during shows. After defeating The Undertaker to win a WWF Championship title shot, Kane won the WWF Championship at the King of the Ring, defeating Stone Cold Steve Austin in a First Blood match after being helped by his brother. However, Kane lost the title back to Austin the next night on Raw. He went on to form a tag team with Mankind, with whom he won the WWF World Tag Team Championship twice. After losing the titles and turning on Mankind, Kane formed a short-lived tag team with his brother. The brothers fought one another for the vacant WWF Championship at Judgment Day: In Your House, with the match ending in a no-contest. During the match, The Undertaker betrayed Kane for Paul Bearer, thus making Kane a tweener and turning Undertaker heel. Kane went on to take part in the "Deadly Games" tournament for the WWF Championship at Survivor Series but was eliminated by The Undertaker in the quarter-finals. 

Kan & Lita's Wedding
Following his defeat at WrestleMania XX, Kane fell in love with Lita, but was spurned. This led to him kidnapping Lita in May and asking her an unknown question, to which she replied in the affirmative later that month. On the same night, Kane won a twenty-man battle royal to receive a World Heavyweight Championship title shot against Chris Benoit at Bad Blood. Lita later announced that she was pregnant, with Matt Hardy her then-boyfriend both on- and off- screen, assuming that he was the child's father. On the 21st of June, episode of Raw, Kane claimed that he was the father. The following week, Kane explained that he had impregnated Lita in order to continue his legacy and justified a vicious attack on Shawn Michaels several weeks earlier by claiming that Michaels had stood in the way of him winning the World Heavyweight Championship. In order to appease Kane, General Manager Eric Bischoff gave Kane a rematch with Benoit, instructing Benoit that he could only win by submission, whereas Kane could win the title by any means. Despite dominating much of the match, Kane again lost to Benoit. Following the match, Lita came to the ring and low-blowed Kane, who initially went to chokeslam her in revenge but stopped when he realized that she was trying to force him to cause her to miscarry their child.

Kane and Matt Hardy faced one another in a "Till Death Do Us Part" match at SummerSlam, with Lita obliged to wed the victor. Kane defeated Hardy, and "married" Lita on the August 23 episode of Raw. Although he was attacked by Hardy during the ceremony, he gained the upper hand and ultimately chokeslammed Hardy off the stage (in reality, Hardy needed time off because of a knee injury and later a staph infection). On the September 13 episode of Raw, Kane accidentally fell on Lita during a match with the debuting Gene Snitsky, who hit him on the back with a steel chair, ostensibly causing Lita to miscarry.


Kane's Pyro
Jacobs is married to Maurisa Jacobs, and has two step-daughters. Jacobs earned a degree in English Literature at Truman State University (known then as Northeast Missouri State University) where he played both basketball and football.

In an interview with Jacobs, he thought things had to change with his mask. Jacobs revealed "I think it was time. We had gone as far as we could go with the character under the mask. I actually felt the mask was limiting my ability to do some things. For years, to portray emotion I had to do it with my body. I never could do it with my face as the other superstars were able to. So, it added another dimension."

Unmasked
After his unmasking on Raw in 2003, Jacobs revealed that performing in his mask was increasingly uncomfortable and difficult. Jacobs revealed that he and Vince McMahon were the only ones that were 100 percent behind the idea of the Kane character removing his mask.

In an interview with Jacobs, conducted in 2010, he said that he has no plans to retire soon. "I'm still having fun," Glenn said. "I'm really at the height of my career, and I don't have any plans of packing it in, at least not in the near future."

A book written by Michael Chiappetta detailing the origins of the Kane character entitled Journey into Darkness was released in 2005. WWE released a 3-disc anthology of Kane named, The Twisted, Disturbed Life of Kane on December 9, 2008. The DVD consisted of Kane's greatest feuds and rivalries during his first 10 years.

Kane Hodder who plays Jason in the Friday The 13th Series 
(Inspiration for the character/wrestler Kane)



Again, honorary mention to the Boogeyman...  Martin "Marty" Wright (born July 15, 1964) is an American professional wrestler and actor best known for his time with World Wrestling Entertainment under the ring name The Boogeyman. Wright first entered the world of professional wrestling to take part in the fourth season of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) produced reality television competition Tough Enough. On October 15, 2004, he attended the two day event in Venice Beach, California, where he was among eight finalists chosen. After surviving the first day of eliminations he admitted that he was actually 40 years old — five years over the competition's cut off point — and not 30 as he'd claimed. As a result he was cut from the competition.

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