This year at WrestleMania, The Undertaker won the World Heavyweight Title in an excellent main event against Edge, and for the second year in a row began what was heavily-rumoured to be a long-term run with the belt.

Now, less than two months later, he has already lost the title, even though it’s looking like he’ll get it back fairly soon. And judging by the stipulation announced on SmackDown, maybe as soon as next weekend at One Night Stand.

Since his arrival in the WWE in November of 1990, Undertaker has held either the WWE or World Championship on several different occasions.

He is portrayed as a top star on the SmackDown brand regardless of whether he holds the title - to the point where Batista went into their feud last year as the underdog despite being World Champion for the majority of the previous two years.

Yet, unlike just about every other top guy in the company’s history, he has never really had an extended run as champion.

There are several reasons for this. Last year he lost the title due to a bicep injury when plans were in place for him to hold the title for several months. This year, he was stripped of the title just over a month after winning it.

Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported that the main reasons were that Vince McMahon feels Taker is better in the role of challenger, and also that there are no challengers for Taker to face, once you get past Edge.

When you consider that Edge only moved to SmackDown once Taker got injured last year, you have to wonder if last year’s long-term Taker title run plans would have ended with the same result. After all, if Edge is his only real challenger this year that doesn’t bode well for Taker’s chances of getting that long-term title run last year even if injury hadn’t intervened.

Taker’s first run with the title lasted only a few days, winning the title from Hulk Hogan at the 1991 Survivor Series before dropping the belt back at the ill-fated This Tuesday In Texas show, WWE’s failed experiment with Tuesday pay-per-views. In that case, it was a WWE booking tradition dating back to the end of Bruno Sammartino’s first run.

They wanted to move the belt from Hogan to Ric Flair without having Flair beat Hogan - ostensibly to set up champion Flair v. challenger Hogan which didn’t end up happening for other reasons - and Taker got the short run with the belt. And there’s no doubt Taker benefited from it.

Although he spent much of the next four years in midcard feuds with the latest monster-of-the-month, he was still the guy who beat Hogan, at a time when one win over a top guy could make your career.

His next run with the championship came in 1997, and was actually his longest run with the title. It’s amazing to think that 11 years ago Undertaker got a title run based on being the guy who’d been there a long time and was rewarded for it. And that really was why he got the belt, since the focus of the TV was far more on the USA v. Canada feud starring Steve Austin and Bret Hart amongst others.

Taker’s run as WWE Champion was filled with title defences against midcard heel stable leader Faarooq, jobber to the stars Vader, and Mankind before he was taken as a serious top guy, before dropping the belt to Bret Hart.

Strangely, the title loss, and subsequent feuds with Shawn Michaels, Kane and Steve Austin over the next 18 months or so might have been the creative highlight of Taker’s career, and is a time period I could write about forever. But again he was a challenger or supporting player rather than the centrepiece of the show.

This point was further hammered home in May of 1999 when he held the title again for a month, winning the belt from Steve Austin before losing it back to him. This run wasn’t really needed, especially as Austin losing the belt for a short while to break up an otherwise long-term run had happened at exactly the same point the year before.

Austin was the star of the show, and to be honest should’ve kept the belt. Austin winning the belt back from Taker even happened on free TV, given away on Raw the night after an extremely substandard King Of The Ring PPV.

Since the WWE roster was split into Raw-exclusive and SmackDown-exclusive brands in 2002, Undertaker has been the star most identifiable with the SmackDown brand, yet until 2007 he wasn’t even considered for a long-term run on top.

In fact, before winning the title from Batista at WrestleMania 23, his only title run in the post-brand split era came in 2002 when he held the title for a month, before dropping it to The Rock. This was done so that Rock could put over Brock Lesnar as the next top guy, against whom Undertaker fell into the challenger role and put Lesnar over in a bloody and dramatic Hell In A Cell match.

When Brock was on top of the WWE, he was understandably the headliner of the SmackDown brand, along with Kurt Angle. A physical phenomenon with great strength and the ability to play a monster heel, along with a legitimate athletic background, Brock was manna from heaven for the WWE.

However, once Brock left, Undertaker was stuck back in the early 1990s doldrums with feuds with Heidenreich, Vince McMahon, and The Dudley Boyz in the infamous “Paul Bearer is murdered to close a PPV” show.

That could’ve been the impetus to give Undertaker a major run as World Champion facing any number of challengers from Eddie Guerrero to Kurt Angle to Booker T to JBL to John Cena to Batista to Rey Mysterio over the next couple of years.

Instead, JBL got that spot, and while his promo work was very strong and his character makeover was one of the biggest in recent years - in the ring he was a failure. And I don’t just mean in terms of match quality, it was as much about the fans not believing in him as a top guy even after 9 months with the title, a problem Taker would not have encountered.

I definitely consider this to be a missed opportunity as far as Undertaker getting a long-term run with the belt - and an opportunity that the WWE missed by their own booking choices rather than via injury or other unforeseen circumstances.

Last year, as mentioned, he was due for a long-term run with the title last year after beating Batista at WrestleMania 23, and that didn’t pan out due to injury.

That was a big blow to the WWE, and it was also a blow to Taker, who had agreed to work a more extended house show schedule than was usual for him, so that they could have their World Champion on the road.

Since WWE essentially is a travelling show supported by weekly television, this is something that has seen as a stumbling block to putting the belt on him in the past. After all, people go to shows to see the stars from television, and if they didn’t get the champion on the untelevised house shows they may feel short-changed. I’d venture to guess that may also be the reason Shawn Michaels, the unarguable best all-round performer in the WWE in 2008, is making his midcard feuds the best thing on TV rather than holding the WWE Title on RAW.

The fact that plans changed due to injury rather than one of Vince McMahon’s whims demanding a switch meant that it was something they would return to.

In fact as soon as Edge jumped to the SmackDown brand and won the World Title from Undertaker in Taker’s last match before his surgery it was clear that the WrestleMania main event this year would be Taker getting the belt back from Edge and embarking on his previously earmarked long-term title run.

But after winning the belt in an excellent match, and retaining in a rematch over the former champion, he was stripped of the title, and the planned long-term run is over less than two months into it. The reasons that have been rumoured don’t hold much water either, at least in my view.

I have long heard the theory that “the money is in the chase” and that heels make better champions. Considering that the most successful World Champions ever in the WWE are Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan, The Rock and Steve Austin, and what they have in common is that they were long-term babyface champions, I don’t understand why the theory has so much credence.

Sure, in the territory days the NWA usually went with a heel champion, but that was a completely different time and the organisation was structured completely differently to the current WWE. In that case, the champion was touring, appearing in cities a couple of times a year, and facing the top star in that territory - and the top stars in each territory were almost always babyfaces, not coincidentally.

But losing to the champion once a year, or maybe not even losing but going to a 60-minute broadway, doesn’t hurt like being unable to unseat the heel champion week after week, month after month, and year after year does.

The other theory, that WWE hasn’t any heels beyond Edge to face Undertaker, also doesn’t hold water. It would be a perfect opportunity to push MVP to the top of the card. Maybe it’s too early for him to actually hold the title, but even so, being in there with Taker for a couple of months in a main event feud would help his standing as a top guy in the eyes of the fans.

Chris Jericho and Batista both look to be in the midst of heel turns, and in Jericho’s case it would be an extremely fresh match considering they are two big stars who have never faced each other. Mr Kennedy could always be turned back heel if his current babyface run on Raw doesn’t work out.

Even John Morrison could be pushed up the card. Then there’s always Money in the Bank winner CM Punk, as well as former WWE Champion Randy Orton, who could be left out in the cold come this summer, or whenever they decide to pull the trigger on a HHH v. John Cena singles feud, and Umaga who has been rumoured to jump to SmackDown for a feud with Undertaker for a long time.

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this article - I think this was the perfect opportunity for the WWE to give Undertaker his extended run as World Champion. And the fact that the run was ended in just over a month when the circumstances were there for it to go much longer, to me shows that he’ll never get the 9 month or one year dominant run where the show is built around him.

And for somebody that has been a part of the WWE for so long, and is treated as such a legendary figure - that’s a shame in my view.