Kane
Glenn Thomas Jacobs (born April 26, 1967) is an American professional wrestler and actor better known by his ring name, Kane. He is currently working for the World Wrestling Entertainment, signed to its Smack Down brand.
Jacobs began his wrestling career in 1992 working on independent circuits. He wrestled in Smoky Mountain Wrestling as Unabomb where he won the SMW Tag Team Championship as a member of The Dynamic Duo, and in the United States Wrestling Association where he won the USWA Heavyweight Championship as Doomsday. He later joined his current promotion, the World Wrestling Federation (which later became World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002) in 1995 where he currently wrestles as Kane, the story line half-brother of The Undertaker. Together, he and The Undertaker have teamed up as the Brothers of Destruction. The specialty match connected to Kane is the Inferno match.
Jacobs has accumulated fifteen championship accolades during his WWE career. He has been a two-time world heavyweight champion (one-time WWF Champion. Also one-time ECW Champion), a two-time WWE Intercontinental Champion, a ten-time Tag Team Champion (nine-time World Tag Team Champion and one-time WCW Tag Team Champion) and a one-time WWE Hardcore Champion. He is also the Third Grand Slam Champion in WWE history. He currently holds the record for most eliminations of superstars in a single Royal Rumble at 11 eliminations.
Professional wrestling career
Early career
He was first known as Angus King when he debuted in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Jacobs later moved south and began wrestling as Doomsday, appearing in the United States Wrestling Association and as Unabomb in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, where he held the SMW Tag Team Championship with Al Snow in a team called The Dynamic Duo. During his time in the United States Wrestling Association, Jacobs (Doomsday) held the USWA Heavyweight Championship. He also wrestled a brief stint in WCW under the name Bruiser Mastino.
World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment
Early gimmicks (1995–1997)
Jacobs made his debut as a heel with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as Dr Isaac Yankem DDS, Jerry Lawler's private dentist. He wrestled Bret Hart for Lawler on many occasions; during their first match at Summer Slam, Jacobs hung Hart by twisting him in the top and middle rope by his neck. He sported this gimmick regularly until May 1996 and made a few appearances as late as September 1996.
In April 1996, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, who had respectively wrestled under the "Razor Ramon" and "Diesel" gimmicks for the last few years, left the World Wrestling Federation to join World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the biggest competitor to the WWF. As the Ramon and Diesel gimmicks were WWF trademarks, the gimmicks did not go to WCW with Hall and Nash, and after a few months, the WWF decided to have other wrestlers portray Ramon and Diesel. In October 1996, play-by-play announcer Jim Ross introduced Rick Bognar as "Razor Ramon" and Jacobs as "Diesel" as part of an attempt to turn Ross into a heel. The Jim Ross heel turn proved unpopular and was dropped almost immediately, and despite receiving a tag title shot at the In Your House 12: It's Time pay-per-view, the gimmick lasted 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 didn't see him get eliminated so he re-entered the ring).
Feud with The Undertaker (1997–2000
In mid 1997, Paul Bearer began tormenting The Undertaker by telling him that his long-lost half-brother Kane (who would also later be revealed as Bearer's son) was coming to the WWF to challenge him. Jacobs re-debuted in the WWF as Kane at Bad Blood: In Your House on October 5, costing The Undertaker the victory in the first ever Hell in a Cell match with Shawn Michaels. Kane and The Undertaker feuded with one another over the following year, during which time their history vis-à-vis one another was expounded upon.
Jacobs won his first match as Kane against Mankind at Survivor Series. In the 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 Wrestle Mania XIV on March 29. Kane was defeated by the Undertaker after three Tombstone Pile drivers. After the match Kane and Paul Bearer attacked the Undertaker. 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 Kane was returning backstage. Vader then 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. 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. 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. The Kane character is portrayed as being psychologically unstable: depressed, schizophrenic, extremely violent, and quick to anger. 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 the help from his brother. The reason why the Undertaker helped Kane was because if Kane had lost, the match stipulations required that he would have set himself on fire, and so Undertaker did not want to see his brother be burned. However, Kane lost the title back to Austin the next night on the episode of RAW. He went on to form a tag team with Mankind, with whom he won the WWF 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 the Survivor Series but was eliminated by The Undertaker in the quarter-finals.
At Rock Bottom: In Your House, Kane interfered in the Buried Alive match between Austin and the Undertaker by giving the Undertaker a Tombstone Pile driver. As a result of this, The Corporation had Kane committed to an insane asylum. However, in 1999, Kane joined The Corporation to stay out of the insane asylum. He eventually turned face after he was betrayed by The Corporation and thrown out of the alliance. Shortly afterward, Kane formed a tag team with X-Pac and acquired a girlfriend, Tori. While teaming with X-Pac, Kane evolved from being mute to aided speech through an electro larynx to speaking unaided. He also became associated with D-Generation X, the faction of which X-Pac was a member. His first unaided words were the DX slogan "suck it". The duo won the WWF Tag Team title twice. The tag team broke apart when X-Pac turned on Kane and rejoined D-Generation X. Kane and X-Pac then were engaged in a lengthy feud against each other. Late in their feud in early 2000, Tori betrayed Kane and joined X-Pac and D-Generation X, and the former partner's feud eventually ended at Wrestle Mania 2000, in which Kane teamed with Rikishi to face X-Pac and Road Dogg. Kane and Rikishi came out victorious after Kane pinned X-Pac following a tombstone pile driver.
Shortly after Wrestle Mania, Kane suffered a hand injury that kept him out of action for a month. When he returned, it was to help The Undertaker and The Rock fight off the McMahon-Helmsley Faction. His involvement in this feud culminated in a main event match at King of the Ring against Vince and Shane McMahon, and then champion Triple H. The Undertaker and Kane's rivalry resurfaced during the match, but they patched their relationship up soon after. Kane turned heel once again by assaulting The Undertaker, leading to a match between the two at Summer Slam. The match ended when The Undertaker removed Kane's mask, causing him to flee the ring, covering his face. Kane stayed in contention for the WWF Championship for the remainder of the year and ended 2000 in a feud with Chris Jericho; he ultimately lost a Last Man Standing match to him at Armageddon.
Brothers of Destruction (2001):
Kane reformed his alliance with The Undertaker (becoming a face again) immediately before the Royal Rumble, in which he eliminated a record number of 11 wrestlers which included Raven , Al Snow , Perry Saturn , Steve Blackman , Grand Master Sexay , The Honky Tonk Man , The Rock , Tazz , Albert , Crash Holly , Scotty 2 Hotty and was the runner-up, after being eliminated by Steve Austin. In early 2001, Kane competed for the Hardcore Championship, defeating Raven for the title at Wrestle Mania X-Seven in a match that also featured Big Show. At the same time, Kane began teaming with The Undertaker as the "Brothers of Destruction". In the course of the year, they feuded with Edge and Christian, Rikishi and Haku, and The Two-Man Power Trip. While feuding with The Two-Man Power Trip, Austin and Triple H broke Kane's left arm (Kayfabe). At Judgment Day, Kane defeated Triple H to win the Intercontinental Championship. He would become the third Grand Slam Champion, and the first person to win the Grand Slam championship by winning the WWF, Intercontinental, Tag Team, and Hardcore championships. He later lost the title to Albert on an episode of Smack Down! following interference from Diamond Dallas Page.
During The Invasion, Kane and The Undertaker feuded with Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Kanyon after Page began stalking The Undertaker's wife Sara. The feud culminated at Summer Slam, when Kane and The Undertaker defeated Page and Kanyon in a steel cage match, resulting in them holding both the WWF World Tag Team Championship and the WCW World Tag Team Championship. Kane and The Undertaker went on to defeat KroniK at Unforgiven, and both participated in the ten man Winner Takes All match at Survivor Series as members of "Team WWF".
