Breaking Down Episode 4 Of 'Undertaker: The Last Ride"

WWE Network's 'Undertaker: The Last Ride' takes you behind the scenes of The Undertaker. SI's Justin Barrasso joins Robin Lundberg to discuss episode four.

Read below for full video transcript:

Robin Lundberg: The last ride special on The Undertaker continues on WWE Network, and for more, I'm joined by our wrestling writer, Justin Barrasso, with a breakdown of episode four. Justin, this focuses on a return to Saudi Arabia. And does it feature the same themes as the documentary so far, which is a rinse repeat cycle of the undertaker having a bad match, needing to redeem himself, or having a good match and believing he still has it?

Justin Barrasso: Absolutely. Undertaker's recent career, over the last couple of years, throughout Saudi Arabia says so much, he has the really good match with Rusev, and we see a blueprint that's successful, you know, pairing him with a younger star who can bump and move and make him look good. Then the WWE gets maybe a little greedy and they put him in that tag match with Brothers of Destruction, with Kane against Triple H And Shawn Michaels, and that does not go well. And that's also close to twenty eight, twenty nine minutes. So it's far too long for four guys that don't have a young guy to work with in the ring. And then he works the Goldberg match. And the Goldberg match is an unmitigated disaster to the point where somebody could have got hurt. It's surprising someone didn't. The documentary doesn't go into detail about Goldberg hitting his head before the match, it talks about the injury he suffered in the match. But again, worst case scenario. And like you said too, now he's going to wrestle again. If it's a good match, he needs one more good one. If it's a bad match, he's going to redeem himself because you don't want to tarnish your legacy or go out with a blemish like that. So it's really a never ending cycle for the Undertaker.

Robin Lundberg: Now, there is also a part of this episode that has a natural tie in to Sports Illustrated, correct?

Justin Barrasso: Yes, Valentine's Day of 2019 last year, we broke the story that the Undertaker would be appearing at Starrcast, which is the wrestling convention, closely aligned, though still separate from All Elite Wrestling. And that was a big story. It was his first, you know, biggest convention in the states, especially so closely tied to AEW. You had the AEW stars like the Young Bucks tweeting the Undertaker and it was such a big deal. Fast forward to April and he's already off the convention and never made it to Starrcast. He's held off Wrestlemania, which you can draw between the lines. It's really interesting. The vulnerability the documentary shows how disappointed Mark Calloway was to not be the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 35. I thought they did a good job of connecting him with so many other legends like Ric Flair and Bret Hart and guys that said, hey, let's talk tonight. We've got all the time in the world. Undertaker did too. He wasn't wrestling anymore. Of course, he's back on Raw the next night, and his return is used for for the Saudi show in June. But I think the key thing with Vince is maybe it was personal, maybe it wasn't. But Vince as the promoter thought the best way to use Undertaker was not at Wrestlemania, which was really the Becky Lynch v. Ronda Rousey show, but really to use him for Saudi Arabia. That didn't work in the end, but you can see why Vince made that move.