WWE legend Kurt Angle mixed it up with the very best professional wrestling had to offer during his storied career in the ring. But there is always one that got away.
As you might recall him mentioning, Angle won Olympic gold in 1996 ‘with a broken freakin’ neck’ before he was thrust into the world of WWE (then WWF) in late 1999, winning his first world title within a year of making his debut for Vince McMahon’s all-conquering promotion.
Over the next six years, he would be involved in some of the biggest feuds, most engrossing storylines and absorbing matches during one of wrestling’s golden periods, becoming a six-time world champion.
Angle shared the ring with every major name of his time, headlining with powerhouses of the Attitude Era in Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Triple H and new stars in Brock Lesnar, John Cena and Randy Orton. Matches against ring royalty in The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels are among his favourites but there is one name missing from his golden collection.
Bret Hart left the WWE in disgust in in 1997 to join WCW (World Championship Wrestling) in the aftermath of ‘The Montreal Screwjob’. Excluding his brief return to the company in 2010, ‘The Hitman’s last meaningful match in professional wrestling was in 2000 with a meeting between two of the greatest technical wrestlers in history consigned to fantasy.
‘I missed him by a year,’ Angle told Metro, speaking via Gambling.com, the guide to the best online sportsbooks. ‘He left the WWE in 1997, I signed with them in 1998. I was so sad when I saw him get injured and his career was ended.
‘The WWE offered me a contract in 1996, I should have taken the damn contract instead of waiting until 1998, because then I would have wrestled Bret. But I’ve always been inspired by Bret Hart because of his technical ability, and that’s what I portrayed in wrestling as well.’
And of today’s crop? ‘The two guys right now today that I would have loved to wrestle are Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay. They’re both phenomenal. I love their style, even their high-flying style — I don’t do a lot of high-flying things, I do a little bit, but I always mesh well with guys like that, guys like Rey Mysterio many times — we mesh really well. So I really would have loved to wrestle those two.’
Angle’s match against The Undertaker at No Way Out 2006 is one he regarded as one of the best of his WWE career. The two first tangled at Fully Loaded 2000 and reignited their chemistry in an untelevised house show six years later. They went to WWE chairman Vince McMahon with the idea of bringing it to WrestleMania 22– with Angle heavyweight champion at the time. It would have presented two scenarios – Angle dropping the belt or The Phenom’s undefeated streak coming to an end. McMahon didn’t like either option.
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‘We went to Vince and said, “listen, we have great chemistry, we would love to have a match at WrestleMania”. And Vince was like, well, “you’re the champion, Kurt, I don’t want to give The Undertaker the title, and Undertaker’s undefeated and I don’t want to end this streak yet”. So he said, “I’ll give you the match at No Way Out”, the pay-per-view before WrestleMania.
‘Undertaker and I wrestled at No Way Out, which is the lowest-buying pay-per-view of the year — everybody’s saving up for WrestleMania — and it’s the least-watched pay-per-view. So it didn’t get that much exposure because of that. It kind of sucks, because that’s when we had our match. We were planning on having it at WrestleMania, but Vince McMahon wouldn’t have it.’
Angle went onto drop the title to Rey Mysterio the following month with The Undertaker’s remaining undefeated at WrestleMania for another eight years before Lesnar brought it all to a shuddering halt in 2014.
Lesnar had just recently re-signed with WWE after switching to the world of UFC. Already one of the most fearsome athletes professional wrestling had ever seen, his reign as UFC champion only added to his ferocious aura and meant he was perhaps the only credible candidate to end ‘The Streak’.
Would Lesnar have been Angle’s choice? ‘I wasn’t going to be the guy that was going to end the undefeated streak. I believe it was going to be either an upcoming guy or a complete dominator that people would buy.
‘Now, they would have bought me beating Undertaker, but I was already way up here as far as main-eventing and being one of the top guys in the company — I didn’t need it. But neither did Brock. Brock is a dominating athlete though — I think people said, “okay, I can accept this”.
‘I would have preferred if it was someone up-and-coming. Whoever was younger back then, maybe, I don’t know if this is a great idea, but Cody Rhodes or CM Punk, somebody up-and-coming who ended up being the top guy in the company. I think it would have benefited them the most. But they decided to end the streak with Brock Lesnar, and I think it was a great decision because it was a safe decision.’
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