Yeah, sadly this. Either of those matches would have been great even in the shape he was in 5 years ago, but sadly he looks like a shell of his former self the last few years. That's not saying he can't go in the ring for a match if he needs to, but he just doesn't look like the Undertaker anymore and the intimation factor is really half the excitement. Not to mention you worry he could get seriously hurt at this point.

I'd rather he just go into the HOF this year, maybe do some other random stuff still. With the loss last year and the mystique of the streak even gone there's not enough positive to a WM match anymore. Maybe, if they were putting Wyatt over, but otherwise.....meh, I'd rather not.

Undertaker was great at Wrestlemania in 2012 and 2013 and sucked in 2014. Outside of that he has hardly wrestled, so his batting average of late is still pretty damn good. Just because he wasn't that great against Lesnar doesn't mean he is done; anybody can have a bad match especially coming off of injuries. We really don't have enough of a sample size to know how much he has left in the tank.

Yeah, but he just didn't look like the Undertaker anymore. He looked like an old guy. He doesn't look like the guy that will destroy anyone that gets in the ring with him. And like I said, that's half the excitement with him.

I've never really cared for Undertaker's look or gimmick outside of the first couple of years in WWF when the kids in the crowd legitimately looked scared when he would come down the aisle. So for me it would be about the match first and foremost. He still resembles a dead man in any case.

Him losing to Lesnar was such a huge myopic mistake that looks worse as time goes on.

Think it's awfully difficult to really judge that result when we still don't really have reliable info on what led to it. If it was a matter of Taker thinking it might just be his last match, and that as a traditionalist he felt he should go out on his back, I think that's cool. That's also the reason I tend to believe until we reasonably know how it went down (we probably have to wait on an official retirement before we get the story on that).

I thought his match vs HHH was outright terrible and his match vs Punk was just ok (i brought this up from terrible on a second watch). Despite my feelings on those, nobody knows what kind of match he could have had if he hadn't got concussed a few minutes in. He was clearly seriously hurt while watching live. The match was abysmal but could've been awesome based on their prior matches albeit 10 years earlier.

In this thread, we overuse the word "terrible."

Neither Taker-HHH match (27 and 28) was terrible. 27 was a little tough to give a rating for because Taker was pretty badly hurt on the spinebuster through the table. Given how hurt I think he was, that the match wound up being anything but a total train wreck was pretty amazing. I hated the ending, but that didn't ruin the whole match for me. (And for the record, I'm not as big a hater of all the finishing-move kickouts as a few others are on this forum.) 28 was a pretty good match.

That said, forget the actual match against Lesnar ... Taker looked like he had a giant fork sticking out of his back before he ever got to the ring. I'm kind of with those who don't want to see him work anymore.

Also, who inducts Taker into the Hall? And how long is that standing ovation? Longer than Hogan's? See, these are the things I think about.

Man, if the WM 27 match between HHH and Taker wasn't terrible, I don't know what I'd call it.

I found the WM 28 match to be very entertaining. Only watched it the one time live, but I thought it delivered.

Glen Jacobs seems like the likeliest choice to give the induction speech, though I'm guessing that the list of Hall of Famers who would love to do it is pretty long, and includes guys at the top now like Vince and HHH. Seems like Taker has a ton of respect in the industry.

IT'S GOTTA BE KANE!

Paul Bearer would have been the obvious choice if he were still alive.

If not Kane, then like LKJ said, there are plenty of guys who would be honored to do it. Foley or DiBiase would be reasonable picks given their history.

I found Taker/HHH downright cringeworthy. Words cannot express how much I hated it. I watch wrestling for the drama and they tried for drama there but it was WAY too much. It is literally one of my least favorite matches of all time. In my opinion, it was terrible and total garbage. Punk/Taker was a lot better but still not very good.

Anyone who says they didn't mark out for sweet chin music into the Pedigree is a liar.

...no.

It certainly made me mark out anyway.

Like I said, just watched it the once, and maybe on second viewing I'll feel stupid for being duped by it, but at the time I definitely had this jaw-dropping moment where I thought "no ****ing way..."

Sorry this is incorrect, I hated that spot

If I made this post and you had made my post, I would be accused of being someone who hates fun.

(I just figured I should start building a resume to point to the next time I get hit with that nonsense.)

Meh, i wasn't very quiet in my complaining about that entire match from the build on words. I was also 100 % sure it wasn't a fall because having taker lose that year with that build would have been complete and utter stupidity.

More to your point however, I remember really enjoying wrasslin from 2009-2012 and I wonder if the product has really just been so bad or if I'm just not in the same care free have fun mode I once was

I wasn't being critical of you. I was just trying to develop a victim complex. It's EMc's fault.

He did look like garbage, but so many times I've seen that old football player or pitcher or wrestler look completely finished and seemingly barely able to move one day, then a week later show up and dominate. It just isn't something we can judge on one appearance.

The product is worse but 2009-12 are not going to go down as banner years either. Remember that so many were calling those years down years for wrestling, and were saying things like "the business is cyclical" and "give it a few years and it will get good again". I was kind of surprised that WWE was able to get significantly worse actually, although given what often happens to companies when the owner/leader becomes elderly perhaps I shouldn't be.

I do believe in updating your views as more information becomes available but the main problem for me is not that he lost but that he lost to Lesnar. I would have no problem if he lost to a really good young guy dedicated to full time wrestling who needed the boost rather than an infrequent part timer who did not need the boost. Now if the plan was for Lesnar to lose to Bryan within the next couple of PPVs while Joe No Memory still can recall Lesnar vs Taker, then it was more of a matter of bad luck than bad design.

One of the dirt sheet reports said that the match was already set when Taker was training and felt like he may not have more in him beyond that one, and that was when he decided to lose. Now that report may not be true, but it sounds believable to me, and if true it sort of absolves WWE on the front of choosing the right person to go over Taker. You laid out the other scenario where it could have just been unlucky.

It's for those reasons that I can't quickly agree with it being a myopic decision for Taker to lose there.

in the steve austin podcast mcmahon admitted that it was his decision for lesnar to go over

HBK has said that Undertaker was told he would lose 4 hours before the match on SCSAs podcast. Up until then Taker thought he was winning.

Yeah most people reported that Vince changed the result on the day.

In other news, ADR signed with ROH.

Welp guess we know the ending to the TLC main event. Other than the standard CENA WINS LOL, this implies pretty heavily to me that we will get vintage Kanerference in the main event stacking the odds even more against Cena, only to have Orton come from outta nowhere to deliver an RKO from outta nowhere on Seth Rollins.