I'm talking, of course, about the streak. Arguably the great achievement in professional wrestling history, over the course of 21 WrestleMania's The Undertaker battled all comers and was victorious every single time. 18 different men stepped up to the plate, and 18 men fell at the feet of the Deadman. The 19th individual to attempt to break it was successful, but this was Brock Lesnar, and Brock Lesnar is no ordinary man. Was it always the plan for Taker to become so intertwined with WrestleMania? I would argue not, as foresight is something that professional wrestling doesn't really have in abundance, but as the victories rattled up the aura around the dead bloke at WrestleMania became the biggest part of the event. I'm not sure when it became the big thing, but the sight of Taker counting his fingers to 10 after defeating Ric Flair at WrestleMania XVIII may be it. The names to fall to Taker at WrestleMania include some genuine legends of the sport; Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Jake Roberts, Triple H, Big BossMan, Edge and more. One particularly impressive aspect of the streak is that the match quality seemed to improve as time went by, the seven in a row between WrestleMania XXIII and XXIX being particularly good. I would go so far as to say his match with Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XXV is the greatest in the history of the event. When Brock Lesnar ended the streak at WrestleMania XXX, I wasn't alone in having to somehow remove my jaw from the floor. It wasn't supposed to happen, it was never going to happen, but it did. At the time, a feeling brooded that it devalued aspects of the streak, but I would argue that this certainly is not the case. The Undertaker is as big a character in the history of professional wrestling, and his streak at WrestleMania was arguably the biggest part of what he became.
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
