The Undertaker Names Who Should Have Ended His WrestleMania Streak

You can’t talk about The Undertaker without talking about The Streak. And you can’t talk about The Streak without talking about how it ended. At WrestleMania XXX Brock Lesnar shocked the wrestling world by pinning The Undertaker and ending The Streak at 21.

Some people are still not over The Streak coming to an end and specifically Lesnar being the one who ended it. He wasn’t an up-and-coming Superstar who needed the ultimate push to get over and Taker admitted as much during an interview with Sports Illustrated.

“I don’t think Brock needed that victory,” said Taker. “Brock was huge. Brock was just coming back from UFC and he’s an attraction all to himself. And whether he loses to The Undertaker isn’t gonna hurt his stock one bit. He’s still gonna be the Beast Incarnate.

“It would’ve done much more for Roman Reigns than it would’ve for Brock Lesnar. Roman Reigns would’ve made a lot more sense for me than Brock.”

At WrestleMania XXX, Reigns had not yet begun his ascent up the WWE hierarchy as he was still a member of The Shield. He did compete at the event as The Shield defeated Kane and the New Age Outlaws in a six-man tag match.

The decision to end The Streak was ultimately Vince McMahon’s. McMahon told Stone Cold Steve Austin that it was done to make an even bigger deal of Lesnar and that there were no other viable candidates at the time. Taker discussed if he ever tried to change McMahon’s decision on the ending.

“Through the course of my 30 years, I’ve had several conversations with Vince and not agreeing with a direction we were moving in or a finish,” he explained. “I’d go into his office and we’d discuss it and go back and forth, back and forth and finally, it’s like ‘OK, we’ll do it your way.’

“Could I have probably changed the finish? Maybe. I think probably I could’ve. It had gone back and forth several times. The day of WrestleMania when I showed up, I was going over. The finish got changed during the day.

“I remember clear as day, I was sitting in the dressing room by myself. Vince comes walking in. Vince never comes into the dressing rooms. Usually you get summoned to his office. As soon as I seen him come in the dressing room, I knew exactly what he was coming in for. He gave me his spiel. I said, ‘Are you sure? Cause once we do this, we can’t go back. Once the streak’s broken, it’s broke.’

“So, I just had a few questions that made him think for a second and he was like, ‘Yeah, this is what I want to do’ and I said, ‘OK, that’s what we’ll do then.'”

If ending The Streak wasn’t enough, The Undertaker was legitimately hurt during the match. He suffered a concussion early in, battled throughout for 25 minutes and had to be hospitalized afterwards.

As for Reigns, he would eventually face The Undertaker at WrestleMania three years later. Reigns would emerge victorious but it didn’t have the same luster as if he would have beaten an undefeated Taker. If The Undertaker truly is retired, then his final WrestleMania record stands at 25-2 with losses to Lesnar and Reigns.