10 Things Nobody Has Told You About WWE WrestleMania
5. The Streak Ended As It Should Have
At WrestleMania XXX, Brock Lesnar defeated the Undertaker and ended his incredible 'Streak' in the process.
Bad match, incredible production: WWE effectively orchestrated a grieving process amongst the live crowd. The denial in the Superdome was, from the perspective of somebody who attended the show live, a powerful feeling. The magnitude of the result was such that it simply could not have happened. That's how brilliantly WWE had marketed the Streak. And to have Lesnar, of all people, be the one to end it?
It was a transgression.
The thing is, if you consider the alternatives, Brock was the correct choice.
Winning a major match is no guarantee of getting over, for starters.
Lesnar was a special attraction and big draw that WWE had nearly killed off by having Triple H go over him in one of the most boring major matches in recorded history. Lesnar ultimately existed to put Roman Reigns over. WWE had a long-term goal in mind. It didn't work, but there was a methodology at play. This wasn't some mean-spirited whim on the part of Vince McMahon. In Lesnar, he created a Big Bad for a purpose. Beating the guy who beat the Undertaker, in theory, would have lessened the risk of fans resenting Roman. Roman was planned to be the top guy for a decade.
Think of the names mooted to end the Streak in the 2000s. While this doesn't excuse WWE's pathetic inability to create new stars, you can probably forgive them for worrying that whomever ended such a significant record could have feasibly been the next Mr. Kennedy. "WWE should have had an emerging young star end the Streak" is probably more naive a take than many are willing to admit. Imagine if they'd actually given it to Bray Wyatt. A fat load of good that would've done.
The broken creative mechanisms simply didn't allow for Bray or Rusev or Cesaro or anyone to benefit from ending it over the long-term. In an ideal world, yes, a red-hot act should have ended the Streak - but it was never a guaranteed vehicle to stardom in that era of WWE.
Whomever ended it would have been scripted to remind fans in promos for the rest of their careers, like the Miz reading his Championships and Accomplishments section of Wikipedia every Monday night.
Sounds quite boring.