If anyone ever asks you why it is that you watch and enjoy professional wrestling, find a copy of this match and show it to them.
This, ladies and gentlemen. . .this is why you watch and enjoy professional wrestling.
In what was billed as "The End of an Era," The Undertaker defeated Triple H in a Hell in a Cell match to run his career record at Wrestlemania to an even 20-0, defeating The Game for the third time during that streak and the second year in a row. This was The Dead Man's first match since last Wrestlemania, and just Triple H's second, and it looked as though neither one of them had taken a break.
Undertaker showed a new look in this one, as his trademark long, black hair was gone. He said that he had cut his hair every day until Triple H accepted his Wrestlemania challenge. I'm not sure of the connection, but he's the Undertaker, and hence can do whatever he darn well pleases.
Triple H got things going by beating the heck out of Undertaker's back with chair shots in the early going, and was screaming at special referee Shawn Michaels to stop the match, but the Undertaker begged The Heartbreak Kid not to. At one point, when it looked like Michaels might stop the match after all, The Undertaker put him in the Hell's Gate submission manuever until Michaels passed out, and when Triple H landed a shot with his trusty sledgehammer, there was no referee to be found. Eventually, Charles Robinson came down as the replacement official, and the match continued.
The match continued on, and there were many times when it appeared that The Undertaker's Wrestlemania streak was in jeopardy, but in the end The Dead Man hit Triple H with a Tombstone piledriver and got the three count to push his Wrestlemania streak to new heights.
After the match, all three men pretty much left the ring together and embraced at the top of the ramp. If this is, indeed, Undertaker's last match, he picked a heck of a match to go out on. In the previews, I said that Chris Jericho and C.M. Punk would likely put together the best wrestling match of the night, and they probably will.
But this was probably your Match of the Year for 2012, ladies and gentlemen. My words can't even begin to do it justice. If you're a fan of sports entertainment, you owe it to yourself to find a way to watch this match.