The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak might have started by accident, but it went on to dominate The Deadman’s legacy.
Every year someone stepped up to challenge the star and every year that challenger ended their night looking at the lights. The quality of matches included in ‘The Streak’ before it was ended by Brock Lesnar varies wildly, and it arguably wasn’t until later in his career, that ‘Taker was really able to have the top-tier matches at the event he hoped for.
Interestingly, it appears that this point hadn’t gone unnoticed by the man himself or others in the locker room.
During an episode of The Kurt Angle Show, Angle explained how this was the driving factor in his trying to get his own WrestleMania match with the legend in 2006. Angle said that Undertaker pitched the match to Vince McMahon, but was shot down as the Executive Chairman didn’t want Undertaker to be World Champion or lose his undefeated streak.
The compromise was a match at No Way Out, which many believe is one of Undertaker’s best-ever matches. At WrestleMania, Undertaker defeated Mark Henry, while Kurt Angle lost the World Championship to Rey Mysterio in a Triple Threat Match.
“It didn’t happen. The reason why, we were trying to get it to happen in 2006. Undertaker and myself, Undertaker went to Vince [McMahon] and said Listen, ‘I want to wrestle Angle at WrestleMania.’ And at this particular time up until then, Undertaker did not have a WrestleMania type of match that he wanted. He always wrestled like Giant Gonzalez or somebody that he was trying to like make, as a wrestler. And he didn’t get a lot of great matchups. He eventually did, he ended up working Triple H and Shawn Michaels, but up until then, he didn’t wrestle anybody that would have given him a five star match at WrestleMania.
So he wanted to do it with me. And Vince was like ‘ain’t gonna happen because Kurt’s our champion, and Undertaker, I don’t want you to beat Kurt for the World Title, because I don’t want you to be the World Champion right now. And Undertaker, I don’t want you to lose your undefeated streak so you guys aren’t going to do it. What we’re going to do is we’re going to have it the month before at No Way Out.’
He granted us His wish but just not at WrestleMania he decided to do it the month before just to entertain us. Just so we could say Vince this is what we could have done at WrestleMania and that is one of my best matches of all time. No Way Out against The Undertaker in 2006. We had a blow away match. I mean it was incredible. And I wish that would have been at WrestleMania that would have been one of the greatest WrestleMania matches of all time.”
The Undertaker Recalls Struggling To Watch WrestleMania 39
The Undertaker might have had his last match three years ago, but that doesn’t mean that his retirement has gotten much easier. Speaking in a recent interview the star recalled attending WrestleMania 39 and wishing he was still in the ring.
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