The Undertaker Believes The Streak Would Have Ended Much Earlier If He Hadn't Become The American Badass

The Undertaker’s transformation from ‘The Deadman’ into ‘The American Badass’ at Judgment Day 2000 was one of the defining moments of the WWF Attitude Era, with the ‘Bad Ass’ helping revitalise the Undertaker character.

Whilst the character change itself divides fan opinion, Taker himself credits the change with keeping the vaunted ‘streak’ alive, saying the following on the Six Feet Under podcast:

"I would have to think the percentages would be pretty high that the streak would have gotten broken sooner. I don't know that for certain, but the percentages, and my understanding of our business, tells me that would have been a nice checkmark on somebody that was coming up. Little did we know that Steve’s [Austin] career would be cut short. Little did we know that Rock was going to come off and become a big movie star. I would have gotten fed to one of them, and it would have been the right thing to do," said Undertaker when asked if the character refresh helped the streak.

Before the character change, Taker was 8-0 at WrestleMania, and the streak itself wouldn’t take on a life of its own until Taker defeated Ric Flair at WrestleMania X8 to go 10-0.

H/T: Fightful