"For Fuck's Sake, Steve, it's an upper body business...."

 

"For Fuck's Sake, Steve, it's an upper body business...."

 

And that's in for the win.

Some more on this topic.

 

Some guys are what I like to call "technically fat". This means that whilst they would be considered obese on civvy street, as soon as the get in the ring, they perform with incredible agility and conditioning (most noticeable with wrestlers who have a background in football) and the extra fat mass doesn't seem to look so bad. In street clothes though, they look like shit.

 

I mentioned Big Show earlier. When Big Show is between 350lbs (I believe this was his true weight in his first WCW matches) and 430lbs, he performs and looks at his best. When he's legitimately getting close to 500lbs (see 2004-2007), he looks completely out of shape, gets blown up early and performs consistently bad. Big Show isn't one of those guys like Vader or Bam Bam - mid 6 footers who are carrying upwards of 370lbs and doing moonsaults whilst keeping the pace with guys half their size.

 

Most recently, Undertaker looked like absolute death. He wasn't fat, he was just completely spent and had visibly aged tremendously since we saw him last in Spring 2013. This was Taker a couple of months before this year's Wrestlemania:

 

 

 

Compare that the end of last non-special appearances run in late 2010:

 

 

 

And for contrast, this was the only time (2000) Undertaker could ever be considered truly fat:

 

 

 

 

Seemingly, as soon as Taker stopped regularly touring with WWE, he aged almost a decade. You can potentially understand his transformation between 2011 to 2012 as he and Michelle McCool had a kid in summer 2012, even then, he still looked in shape and wrestled a gruelling long HIAC match. This worryingly hints at the measures some wrestlers take to prevent the toll the road takes on them, even moreso when you consider that even with an extended hiatus and ample rest, the cessation of these "measures" will immediately start the clocks running again.