The Undertaker is the greatest of all time...

[hb2k]

I'll go against this a little bit.

The case you've made is strong, but to me the major line to be drawn is, for as much staying power as his gimmick has had through evolution, it has also been through several periods of awfulness that were overlooked because it's a company creation.

Started out red-hot in 90-91.

They turn him face, and he proceeds to have years of shitty matches with your Kamalas, Gonzalez', Yokos, Fake Takers, IRS', Bundys, etc. He was a strong draw until 94, so the bad matches aren't the biggest deal.

He had a good run from 96 to 98. Morphed into Evil Ministry and Badass Taker, and despite mostly subpar matches, gets runs against the top players and is a staple.

Had a terrible overpush in 2002 that stunk, but a couple of good matches with Brock, Jeff Hardy, and at Vengeance with Rock and Kurt, not like everything he did was terrible.

Eventually comes back as the Deadman and goes right back to being awful in horrifically bad feuds with Heidenreich, Dudleyz, JBL, Orton, etc.

It isn't until 2007 when he's in the mix with Edge and Batista that he really wakes back up, and then became the few times a year guy with the long history we know now.

The point to all this is twofold:

1. Taker, throughout the course of his career, is the quintessential example of a guy who wrestled at the level of his opponent. So he's not the greatest of all time on that front.

2. And more importantly, there is no time in his career that the company was ever solely, or even majority, on his shoulders. He was the guy that worked with the star and through evolving himself and the company's stock in him, he stuck around. The closest you can point to where you can definitively say Taker was in a role of a legit difference maker was in the later WrestleMania years, but even then, how much of it is him, and how much is the brand name of Mania? Certainly a look at the Mania 26 buyrate, Taker in the main event with Shawn's career on the line, which did a bad number because of the competition that weekend from UFC, shows me that he's not strong enough a star in his own right to force those buys.

Don't get me wrong, he's had an amazing career and the guy is great. But greatest of all time to me means at least one of those two (or ideally both) have be exceptional. The case for him, as mentioned, is longevity in a key role, but that alone doesn't convince me personally.