Why the Undertaker needed 'The Streak'

There are certain accomplishments in sports that place an athlete on a pedestal that other mortals cannot fathom. For these are accomplishments that are so special, they just unshackle the mind. Rafael Nadal’s ten French Open titles, Roger Federer’s eight Wimbledon titles, and Sachin Tendulkar’s hundred hundreds are achievements that send you into a tizzy.

And, in sports entertainment, if there is one accomplishment that dwarfs all the others, then, it is the Undertaker and 'The Streak'. For over two decades, 'The Streak' was the only constant at WrestleMania.

Superstars would come and go, but the Undertaker and The Streak lived on. It was almost a perennial part of WrestleMania. It was such a special accomplishment, that it even dwarfed some of the greatest title reigns of the WWE.

But the question is, when you take away 'The Streak' from the Undertaker, what is left of 'The Phenom'? Will he still be venerated as the mythical god, as the undisputed greatest of all time?

When you look at other accomplishments of ‘The Deadman’, they do not put him at the highest pedestal. In fact, at the cost of earning the wrath of his millions of fans (I am one of them), we can even say that they are pretty ordinary.

He has won seven world titles, and it pales in comparison to the 16 that John Cena and Ric Flair won, & the 13 that Triple H won. He has also won the Royal Rumble once, and this too pales in comparison to the three that the iconic Stone Cold Steve Austin won.

But then, of course, we can all safely agree upon one thing. No superstar could have carried 'The Streak' the way the Undertaker did, year after year, decade after decade. No superstar exudes the aura of ‘The Phenom’ at the ‘Show Of Shows’.

The sound of the gong, the mystical walk, the way he protected the character, his ability to continuously morph and change with time, certainly makes the Undertaker one of the greatest characters in the history of the WWE.

But then, when anybody talks of the Undertaker’s greatness, the first number they throw up, and they do it very casually, is 21-0. The one number that has almost come to define who the Undertaker is, the one number that gives no room for comparison, and certainly, one number that can never ever be replicated.

But then, as much as WrestleMania needed the Undertaker, ‘The Deadman’ too, needed WrestleMania, and most importantly, he needed ‘The Streak’. And that is the most wonderful part of this relationship. And of course, some of WWE’s greatest performers have fallen to ‘The Phenom’ at the ‘Grandest Stage Of Them All’.

This is a very rare situation, where in spite of being at the top for almost three decades, there is just the one number that defines a man as iconic as The Undertaker, a number that dwarfs all his other accomplishments and accolades.

And that makes this accomplishment all the more special.

And that is why, when you take away ‘The Streak’ from the Undertaker, you take away a huge portion of the man himself. For as Triple H very beautifully said,

“When the Streak dies, Undertaker, you die as well.”