Brock Lesnar vs. Undertaker: A Beast Incarnate Win Is Best for Business for WWE

WWE is pitching Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker at SummerSlam to be a fight that The Phenom can't afford to lose—but in reality, the very opposite is true.

Ahead of WrestleMania 31, it was difficult to get that excited about the prospect of a showdown between The Beast and The Deadman. It seemed that Lesnar was destined to become another name on the Undertaker's list of WrestleMania conquests.

However, that wasn't the situation that played out. Lesnar broke the streak and began a period of dominance, obliterating John Cena and earning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam just a few months later.

One year after Lesnar's title win, he's heading into SummerSlam 2015 without the belt. But he still hasn't picked up a decisive loss since beating Undertaker at WrestleMania 30. To an up-and-comer, beating Lesnar could be the foundation of a storied career. But to The Phenom, it would be a footnote.

Credit: WWE.com

The reason that the end of The Streak was such an impactful moment is because it upset the status quo in WWE. Facing The Undertaker at WrestleMania was the biggest challenge on the table for any active WWE competitor. Afterwards, a one-on-one match with Lesnar would fill that position.

While it might not seem like the biggest shift, this is a part of the youth movement that has refreshed the WWE roster over the past couple of years. At 38 years old, Lesnar is closer to the average age of a regular performer than that of a part-timer.

It's easy to understand why WWE wants to keep veteran athletes like The Undertaker around. They sell tickets. However, it's difficult for someone who debuted for the company a quarter of a century ago to maintain a believable spot at the top of the card, competing against wrestlers two decades younger.

Lesnar doesn't have that problem. While Undertaker is best kept as a marquee competitor, The Beast is in a position to challenge for the world title, as well as engage in grudge matches. Seeing The Phenom chase the belt would be a spectacle, but it wouldn't offer much more than that.

All this being said, the main event of SummerSlam requires a decisive finish. If Undertaker picks up the win and avenges his WrestleMania loss, almost two years of forward progress will be undone in the time it takes to count a pinfall.

While Undertaker certainly deserves a lot of respect for his storied career, he's not the man to best Lesnar. There's simply no benefit to giving that win to someone who, realistically, has such a limited amount of top-tier matches left in him.

WWE needs to look forward, and the way to do that is by allowing a star of the future to punch their ticket to the top via a win over Lesnar. This could be far in the future, but Lesnar needs to be protected until it comes to pass.

In the meantime, there's reason to believe that Lesnar vs. Undertaker will be a terrific contest. The intensity that the pair demonstrated in their pull-apart brawl on Raw a few weeks ago evoked their match at No Mercy in 2002, and that's a very exciting prospect.

Yet it's impossible to overstate how much of a disappointment it would be to see Undertaker win the match. All the work that's been done over the past few years to ensure WWE's bright future could be undone, all because of an unnecessary focus on the past.