The Undertaker not being at WrestleMania 35 isn’t the worst thing

Championship main event

In 1997 the Rosemont Horizon played host to WrestleMania 13. This would be the first time a WrestleMania didn’t use roman numerals in the title and it also marked the first time The Undertaker would win the WWE(F) Championship Title when he faced then champion Sycho Sid.

The match came after a series of incidents which began on the heels of Shawn Michaels’ infamous “lost his smile” speech when he vacated the championship. A final four match took place at In Your House which came down to Bret Hart and The Undertaker with Hart walking away the victor. Hart’s title reign only lasted one day, as he dropped the belt to Sycho Sid the next night on Monday Night Raw due to interference from “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. With Hart and Austin breaking off into their own program, that left Sid to face Undertaker at WrestleMania 13.

To up the stakes, the two 6-footers would battle it out in a no-disqualification match. That, coupled with interference from Hart (who had wrestled a history-making match with Austin earlier in the night) brought extra chaos to a match that otherwise was slow and methodical. The end of the match saw The Undertaker in his familiar pose on bent knee, hand raised to the sky, but this time the championship belt was firmly in his grasp.