Thoughts From The Top Rope 04.22.09: Modern Greats Series – Kurt Angle

Ric Flair. Hulk Hogan. Bruno Sammartino. Bret Hart. Steve Austin. These are just some of the greatest performers to have ever graced the squared circle, and professional wrestling is so much better off because each has done so. However, these unforgettable names have all but ridden off into the sunset.

Shawn Michaels. The Undertaker. Sting. Three names equally as important to the wonder that is pro wrestling, three names that have given us decades of service but are unfortunately in the twilight of their respective careers.

Kurt Angle. Arguably as good a performer as any of the names mentioned above. Without doubt, he is one of the most technically sound athletes that professional wrestling has ever seen. His in-ring repertoire is unparralled, his opponents in his classic matches make up for a who’s who of pro wrestling greats and frankly, there may be no better worker in the wrestling world today. The very best thing about Kurt Angle? He’s still got many more years left in him.

When Kurt Angle was released from (or quit, depending on who you believe), the WWE back in the summer of 2006, it was greatly speculated that Kurt Angle was done: why would WWE risk losing one of its top talents if they did not think his deteriorating health was a liability? And indeed, in the next year or so Kurt Angle took more in-ring risks, sounded more delusional with each interview and struck more fear into fans’ hearts each time he stepped into the ring. But as he always has done, from the 1996 Olympics to the broken neck that couldn’t stop him headlining WrestleMania XIX, he persevered. He pulled through and has come out a better performer than before. His career has been reborn in the last couple of years, and although it may go under the radar in the haphazard world that is TNA, his performances in the ring are world class.

Kurt Angle is one of the few guys that is so good he forces his opponents to elevate their own game; indeed, I’d argue that only Shawn Michaels has ever been as good at that aspect of the game as Angle is. And I think it’s a scary thought that Angle has only been doing this ten years; it takes good performers that long to be half as good, and great performers twice as long to be in the same league. Kurt Angle can be seen as a modern great, or simply one of the best of all time. And here are five reasons why;

5. Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe, TNA Genesis 2006
This was seen as a dream match, Kurt Angle had just come to TNA and the man that stood toe to toe with him from the off was the man who had single-handedly ran through just about everyone else in the company. Expectations for this one were of a scale that hadn’t been necessary for a long time. This match was going to be huge, one of the best of all time. And many will tell you that it did not manage to live up to expectations. And while that’s perhaps a plausible argument, I think it’s unfair, because this was a balls-to-wall showdown between two of the most intense performers ever and they certainly had the live audience in the Impact zone and everyone watching at home engrossed in what quickly progressed into a bloody war. Both men knew what was expected of them going into this match, and I think they looked to do something different, surprising the crowd by going all-out from the get-go and looking to exasperate the audience in a hurry. It came off as an epic despite only going some fourteen-minutes, and that’s a testament to the energy both guys put in here.. There’s a reason people wanted to see this match so badly; they expected the best, and I think they got it.

4. World Heavyweight Championship Match: Kurt Angle vs. The Undertaker, WWE No Way Out 2006
I can’t quite recall what people’s expectations were for this match going in, but given that Angle was in the midst of an uninspired and uneventful run as World Heavyweight Champion and that The Undertaker hadn’t really reached the stride he has in recent years, I don’t think they were too high. Certainly, I don’t think anyone was expecting the match to be as astonishing as it was. And while this is one of Angle’s greatest matches, I have to give credit to The Undertaker for one of the best performances of his career, staying with Angle throughout the entire match and ultimately more than holding up his end of the bargain in delivering one of the greatest World Heavyweight Championship matches since its 2002 inception. I think this match reinvigorated Taker as over the next few years he would work that much harder to recreate some of the magic he showed here on a regular basis. Of course, Angle delivered the kind of performance we’d come to expect; one of utmost professionalism and brilliance.

3. WWE Championship Match: Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit, WWE Royal Rumble 2003
Sometimes “throwaway” championship matches can deliver in a huge way. Going into this match, nobody really thought that Benoit had stood a snowball’s chance in hell. But a sign of a truly great match is that it is able to make the audience believe that the underdog has a shot, and at points in this match I and many others could actually envisage Benoit winning the WWE Championship, and that is nothing but a huge credit to the ability of these two men and the near-flawless match they put on here.

Benoit and Angle are arguably the two best technical wrestlers of all time, and although I imagine Bret Hart would have something to say about that, I think they staked a pretty substantial claim to that in this match. This was an intense technical bout, loaded with counters, and counters to counters and even counters to those counters. Some of the holds used in this match were just spectacularly applied in that they held the fans’ interest rather than giving them a chance to catch their breath. And there has perhaps never been a match with more suplexes delivered so crisply and so intensely. This is one of those matches that you will never tire of seeing because you knows it’s two of the best putting on a clinic just to prove that they can do it like no other.

2. WWE Tag Team Championship Match: Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit vs. Edge and Rey Mysterio, WWE No Mercy 2002
Usually, I would be somewhat reluctant to include a tag team encounter so high on a list that sites a performer’s ten greatest matches, but I think this bout to crown the first-ever WWE Tag Team Champions just about warrants it. Tag matches don’t generally have any kind of iconic status regardless of how good they are, and generally the best tag matches are the spotfests like TLC and thus I feel shouldn’t be considered classics because they’re one-dimensional. And while this match may be neither a tremendous spotfest nor particularly iconic, it’s a classic.

Hailed as the 2002 Match of the Year (and that was a year with a lot of great matches), this was the finals of tournament to crown a brand new set of tag team champions exclusive to the SmackDown brand, and after an uninspiring tournament, we got a blockbuster of finals. Benoit and Angle, despite being the greatest of rivals, had a mutual respect for each other and when they reluctantly teamed up, they made for one hell of a tag team who pretty much unstoppable. Edge and Rey Mysterio, two quick-as-a-hiccup fan favourites, made for the perfect foil to Benoit and Angle’s attempt to win tag team gold and yet even they came up short.

As you’d expect from these four, the match was wrestled at a ferocious pace, with Rey for the most part playing the face-in-peril, but playing to perfection. But while the tag team formula was roughly in place, these performers kept it fresh and exciting with their never really being a slow or boring point in the match like their tends to be in many tag team matches nowadays. The build to the climax of the match was fantastic, and as everything began to fall into place it became clear that this would be heralded as a classic the next day, and it just so happens it still is to this very day. Arguably the greatest tag team match of all time, this is a phenomenal example of how tag matches could and should be done, ironically from two makeshift tag teams.

1. Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels, WWE WrestleMania 21

And so we come to what I consider to be Kurt Angle’s greatest match, one of the greatest matches in WrestleMania history and probably one of the greatest matches of all time. Quite simply this was two of the very best in-ring performers on the grandest stage in sports entertainment tearing shit up for thirty-minutes in an iconic first encounter between the two.

The basic premise going into the match was that Angle was essentially jealous of the fact that when he was winning a gold medal with a broken in ’96, all anyone was talking about was Shawn Michaels coming down from the rafters that year at WrestleMania and putting on a sixty-minute clinic with Bret Hart. Angle was infuriated by the fact that Michaels was regarded as the greatest performer of the time and sought to prove that he was in fact the very best. In terms of storyline, Angle did just that as he eventually forced Michaels to submit to the Ankle Lock. In reality, both guys proved that they were the absolute best of the best.

Pat Patterson had retired as an agent a few months before this match occurred, but came out of retirement for one night to go over the plans for the match with Angle and Michaels because he was so excited about it. The Undertaker called the match “unbelievable”, while Bobby Heenan called it “the best wrestling match [he’d] ever seen.” Such accolades are hard to come by from fans, let alone peers, some of the greatest of all time.

Indeed the match was simply phenomenal. It began with Michaels out-wrestling Kurt Angle, something that is not done very often if at all. I loved the psychology of this, as it threw Angle off his game. But at the same time Shawn had to be wary of getting caught in a hold because as mentioned, taking it to the mat with Angle is a risky move. Of course, it would have helped that Angle would not have expected that approach from Shawn. Once Angle was successfully thrown, Michaels took it a step further by slapping Angle across the face. Unfortunately this backfired as Kurt Angle just about went psychotic on Michaels’ ass, to the point where he attempted to German suplex him from the ring apron to the announce table. Shawn eventually countered this with a low blow, perhaps showing that he couldn’t beat Angle cleanly, another great moment of psychology in this match. From here, Shawn would go into full Showstopper mode, nailing Angle with a visually-stunning springboard plancha onto the announce desk. But Angle would essentially match him move for move, proving that he was every bit the performer that Michaels was. But Kurt couldn’t put Michaels away, despite going to the Ankle Lock on numerous occasions, and hitting two Angle Slams, one of which came from the top rope. Eventually Angle’s frustration got the better of him and he got caught with one of the most sudden Sweet Chin Musics of all time. But the punishment had taken its toll on Michaels, and by the time he’d climbed to his feet, Angle had mentally recovered from the kick, and recovered from his seemingly unconscious state to pick the ankle of Michaels. Shawn fought the move for as long as anyone has, ever, but once Angle grapevined the leg, there was no escape and Shawn had to submit to end what was a truly epic encounter.

Psychology, drama, suspense, mat wrestling, jaw-dropping high spots and unparraled excitement are just some of the things that make this the match it was. If you’ve never seen this match before, you’re missing out, it’s outstanding; one of the best you’ll ever witness.

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Next week, Thoughts From The Top Rope’s “Modern Greats” series continues with a look at a superstar who debuted as an enigmatic outcast during the Attitude era but who would grow into the Rated R Superstar, one of most decorated and accomplished performers in the history of the business, Edge.

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