10 Part-Timers Who Screwed With The WWE Roster
6. A Damp Squib Let Off Too Soon
Elsewhere at WrestleMania 31, the Undertaker faced off against the 'New Face Of Fear', upstart swamp diabolist and cult leader Bray Wyatt. The angle didn't get off on the right foot to begin with, given that the Undertaker hadn't been seen since losing to Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania the previous year, and didn't actually appear in person to promote the match at all, leaving practically all of the legwork to Wyatt.
The match itself was average at best. Wyatt had injured his ankle while warming up, so the pace was set fairly slow. Moreover, for the first time in living memory, The Undertaker had entered WrestleMania with little fanfare. It was more than just the loss of the Streak: his aura had been badly dented by the poor quality of the previous year's match, in which he'd suffered a concussion early on and looked every bit of his forty-nine years.
This was a disservice to a potentially lucrative feud, however. It's common knowledge that Mark Calaway, the man behind the 'Dead Man' gimmick, is old school enough to consider the passing of the torch the honourable thing to do before he retired. Bray Wyatt was seemingly being positioned as the successor to The Undertaker's dark, mysterious position on the WWE roster, and wrestling pundits had long speculated as to when and where the two would confront one another. Given Undertaker's tenuous position after WrestleMania XXX, he simply couldn't afford to lose his very next match, so Wyatt lay down for him instead.
Of course, Undertaker would return at SummerSlam to exact revenge on Lesnar - so why he needed to attend WrestleMania 31 four months earlier just to sit on Wyatt in a match with no build and no interest wasn't clear outside of obvious short-term financial gain. The Bray Wyatt angle was revisited with even worse results immediately after his series with Lesnar. This time the 'Dead Man' and his storyline brother Kane would make fools of Bray and his entire Family to celebrate his 25th anniversary in the WWF/E. 2015 was less a passing of a torch and more the snuffing of a candle.