During his time in the WWF/WWE, The Undertaker posted an impressive 803-230-76 record, walking away victorious in 72.4% of his matches. Yet the one match that stands out in the minds of wrestling fans after three decades with the company is his WrestleMania 30 battle with Brock Lesnar.
Having faced each other in three previous pay-per-view matches, none of which saw Undertaker’s hand raised in victory, their meeting on the Grandest Stage Of Them All seemed to play into favor of the Deadman. Entering the match, Undertaker sported the legendary 21-0 record that seemed to be unbreakable.
Before we get into the What If? scenario, let’s quickly set the table (and for the record, the streak should have never been broken). Following an eight-year absence from the WWE, Lesnar returned the night after WrestleMania 28. A one-off match with John Cena, a lengthy feud with Triple H, and a couple of PPV meetings with CM Punk and the Big Show would carry Lesnar through until the February 24, 2014 episode of Monday Night Raw.
It was here that Undertaker made his own return from a ten-month hiatus to confront The Beast Incarnate and challenge him to a match at WrestleMania XXX.
Being the icon that he was, it seemed unlikely that Undertaker was going to give up the streak. It’s one thing to lose a match, but for Undertaker to lose at WrestleMania? This sort of thing didn’t just happen.
At 49 years old, it wasn’t like Mark Calaway was a spring chicken. Yet was there justification for having Lesnar be the one to put a notch in Undertaker’s WrestleMania loss column?
So let’s imagine that Undertaker didn’t suffer a concussion just minutes into their match. Let’s imagine that Undertaker hits all of his token moves throughout the match. A series of throat strikes, a sidewalk slam, Old School, rapid-fire punches in the corner, Snake Eyes, a leg drop on the apron, a choke slam, and after Lesnar ate it all and kept on coming back for more, Taker would finish off the match locking Lesnar into Hell’s Gate.
In order to keep Lesnar looking strong, Taker would finish off his opponent with an MMA submission hold, but rather than tapping out, Lesnar would suffer the loss after failing to answer the referee’s call, falling unconscious.
Sporting a 22-0 record, not to mention a serious beating of his own at the hands of Lesnar, Undertaker would take his usual post-WrestleMania hiatus only to return nearly a year later.
In 2015, Bray Wyatt declared himself “The New Face of Fear”. With a dark character, who channeled the immoral world and created a cult-like character, Wyatt, complete with a dark entrance, eerie theme song, and his “fireflies” had all the makings of an Undertaker character for the new generation. Ten years younger than Lesnar, Wyatt’s match against the Undertaker at WrestleMania XXXI would be that much more spectacular. Not only would their match be bumped to later in the card to make sense of their cryptic and supernatural entrances (rather than in the late afternoon when it was still light, making their walk to the ring less impactful) but it would have had a completely different result, one that resulted in the makings of a main event star.
Yes, Wyatt would hold the WWE Championship and Universal Championship a combined three times, but being the one to break the Undertaker’s streak would have been a career-altering decision that may have impacted Wyatt’s character more than any title belt. Whether Wyatt would have remained the bayou-dwelling villain or become the FunHouse / Fiend character remains to be known, but imagine if you will a WrestleMania XXXII match between Wyatt and Lesnar, a man hell-bent on beating the man who knocked off the Phenom.
Considering the reaction that both men received when they met for a brief moment at the 2016 Royal Rumble, fans would have welcomed a one-on-one battle at WrestleMania rather than the uninspiring No Holds Barred Street Fight they were subject to between Lesnar and Dean Ambrose or the short, uneventful, useless WrestleMania moment between The Rock and The Wyatt Family.
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