By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE CEO Vince McMahon says it was ultimately his decision to end The Undertaker's unbeaten streak at WrestleMania 30 earlier this year.

McMahon offered two reasons he made the call during a live podcast interview with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin Monday night on WWE Network. (1) He believed it would make a huge deal out of Brock Lesnar to set up WM31. (2) He did not see any other candidates on the roster down the road.

This was under the umbrella of believing Taker should "give back to the business" by losing The Streak, as opposed to the other side of the argument that Taker's Streak never should have ended.

Austin set up the question by asking for the who, what, when, why of the decision-making process to end The Streak. This set up McMahon framing it as if Taker made the decision as his way of giving back.

Austin called b.s. that Taker would make that call, prompting McMahon to clarify that he made the final decision, but Taker was a willing participant because he wanted to give back.

McMahon noted that Taker was initially shocked at McMahon's decision, which he said was not an easy decision.

In hindsight, McMahon said he thinks he made the right decision because he thinks Lesnar will be hot going into WrestleMania 31 when he (or Paul Heyman) reminds everyone of what he did at last year's Mania.

This would presumably set up a heat/Streak transfer to the wrestler that Lesnar faces at WM31.

Caldwell's Analysis: I still disagree with the premise that Taker had to drop The Streak at some point. I think it made people more mad at WWE for taking away a key piece of what makes WrestleMania WrestleMania than setting up Lesnar for a big heat transfer to make a new star at WM31. Now, they could come up with something to knock people's socks off and have Paul Heyman deliver the goods on the mic during WrestleMania Season, but they will really have to be on their A-Game once the calendar flips to 2015. Right now, they are nowhere near that, especially with how Lesnar's WWE Title run has been handled starting with the fall-out from Summerslam when McMahon panicked and brought back John Cena no-selling the effects of the beating he took from Lesnar at SSlam instead of going on a journey to grow as a character and top star. Since then, Lesnar has disappeared along with the title, which has rarely been mentioned over the past two months. It's fine if Lesnar is going to disappear for a while to protect him as a "special attraction," but WWE had a chance to tell a really good title chase story. That has not been the case, and we seemed to find out why during McMahon's podcast when he was very flippant about the WWE Title.

[Torch art credit Travis Beaven (c) PWTorch.com]

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