The Undertaker's 24 WrestleMania Matches Ranked - From Worst To Best
2. Vs. Shawn Michaels - WrestleMania XXV
If Undertaker and Shawn Michaels' seminal 2009 masterpiece was slight in any department, it was in its fairly simplistic plot. It was a tale of two legendary players synonymous with the grandest stage destroying one another to own it. That stage was the most epic of them all, and the narrative demanded a festival of near-impossible oneupmanship.
'Taker and Michaels kicked out of major moves with a frequency that would have been impossible to believe in, had it taken place at any other pay-per-view. But as much as the greatest matches warrant that designation with less of an overstated (and comparatively easy) premise, the moves struck have arguably never been delivered better in any match ever held anywhere. Execution is often overlooked, but ‘Taker never struck the Chokeslam with as much force as he did here, never did his opponent sell it from such an awesome height.
That’s not to say the match was lacking in psychology. Michaels’ body language in the post-suicide dive count-out sequence was the very essence of it. When he flailed with an almost pathetic urgency, pressing the referee to reach ten, it conveyed the seriousness of the stakes expertly. It was impossible not to believe in it.
It was ultra-dramatic, excellently-worked. It lacked a certain richness - the story behind Mitsuharu Misawa versus Toshiaki Kawada from 1994 bettered it by far - but to rule it out of the conversation for the greatest of all time is pedantic in the extreme.
It was a match completely attuned to its environment, pitched perfectly for the stadium setting - overstated, but justifiably so.