Kurt Angle’s 20 Greatest Rivals

WWE may not have been willing to give proper due to Kurt Angle and his retirement from the ring, but we here at The Wrestling Estate are more than cognizant of everything Angle has accomplished in his career and are here to celebrate one of the most unique careers a wrestler has ever had. Here is a list of Kurt Angle’s 20 greatest rivals, along with a recommended match between the two. As always, feel free to get after me on Twitter if you agree with anything I have to say or you just disagree with the whole thing. I won’t hold it against you either way.

And who knows? If you happen to like this list, maybe I’ll do some more at a later time.

20. Daniel Puder

I gave this list a lot of thought, but realized you cannot have a list of Kurt Angle’s greatest adversaries without Daniel Puder.

Let me explain.

Remember that 2004 Tough Enough season where the “season” played out in skits on SmackDown and WWE.com? Well, one of the more memorable times came when after a squat thrust competition. Angle wasted Chris Nawrocki in a shoot wrestling match. Afterwards, Angle cut a scathing promo on the cast and challenged anyone else willing to take him on. Puder stepped up, pulled guard and locked a kimura on Angle, a legitimate hold that could have broken Angle’s arm. Referee Jimmy Korderas quickly counted three to end the bout, despite the fact that Puder’s shoulders were not fully down on the mat, bridging up at two. The incident ultimately earned Puder the competition, in addition to a complete and utter beat down at the hands of Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero and Hardcore Holly at the 2005 Royal Rumble. Even if Angle didn’t exactly come out of this one looking his strongest, it was a cool, unscripted moment in hindsight and worth mentioning in his career highlights.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Daniel Puder (SmackDown 2004)

19. Mr. Anderson

Unlike Angle’s career, Mr. Kennedy’s career could probably be chalked up as a disappointment. given the promise he showed early in his SmackDown run. But when both Angle and the rechristened Mr. Anderson made their way to TNA, they actually had a pretty nifty feud and worked decently together. By this point, Angle had adapted his style in a way that he could mesh with anyone, even the brawling style of Mr. Anderson. The feud featured some good matches and even took on a political tone after Anderson attacked Angle with his own dog tags, spitting in the face of American military everywhere.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson (Lockdown 2010)

18. Randy Orton

Randy Orton’s crusade against ECW and “hardcore porn” eventually made contact with Angle, who had been drafted to ECW late in his WWE run. The two had a very fun match at the One Night Stand sequel, and while that’s the match I’m going to recommend, it’s key to remember that both guys had a history and always worked well together. It only makes sense, considering how talented they both are, but Angle and Orton actually competed in the WrestleMania 22 SmackDown main event with Rey Mysterio, and in spite of finding themselves in a bit of a time crunch, put on a very entertaining match.

It all boils down to this. When you think of the great amateur wrestlers, Angle comes to mind. When it comes to guys who personify pro wrestlers, Orton comes to mind. Simple as that.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton (One Night Stand 2006)

17. Sting

Imagine getting in a time capsule back to 2003, right after the conclusion of the main event of WrestleMania XIX. You and your buddy have been drinking all show, and he says to you, “in four years, Kurt is going to leave WWE and wherever he goes, he is not only going to have a series of matches with Sting, but they’ll also be in a faction together.” Would you believe him? I wouldn’t have, but that’s what we got in Angle’s TNA run!

I liked the Main Event Mafia faction. Yes, factions of top guys had been done before, but not like this and it represented a big character shift for Angle. His gimmick was no longer former Olympian, but pro wrestling mega star who happened to win an Olympic gold medal in the past. As for Sting, their feud was never really personal, though it was a breath of fresh air as a long-sustaining rivalry over pride and accolades. And as much as the match had been done over the years, it never got old.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Sting, Empty Arena (TNA Impact 2009)

16. Big Show

For me, this one may be a bit personal as I always thought Kurt Angle and the Big Show meshed extremely well together as personality foils. Remember, Big Show factored into Angle’s feud with Brock Lesnar initially, and from there feuded with Kurt in on again, off again fashion, all the way up to the 2005 Royal Rumble. By that point, the tables had been turned with Angle being the heel and Big Show playing babyface out for retribution after getting indefinitely suspended for chokeslamming Angle off a ledge. Angle, along with his flunkies Reigns and Jindrak, even shaved Show’s head at the end of an episode of SmackDown, so needless to say, these two have been through a lot together.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Big Show vs. JBL (Royal Rumble 2005)

15. Christian

Though they started out in Team RECK with Edge and Rhyno, Christian and Angle went on to work together much more extensively in TNA and, for a time, may have been the two best wrestlers in the company. Both guys captained teams at Lockdown 2007, but the rivalry didn’t come until the Angle Alliance mixed it up with the Christian Coalition later that year. AJ Styles was really the key to all of it, as he left Christian’s side to join Kurt, which yielded a few memorable segments to cap off a series of great Christian and Angle matches.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Christian (Final Resolution 2008)

14. Edge

Also a member of Team RECK, Edge had the advantage of working with Angle more in WWE. After all, it was Edge who was responsible for the loss of Angle’s hair in storyline, beating him in a hair match at Judgment Day 2002. I loved that match, but amazingly it seems to get lost being a memorable segment when Edge, showing Angle a series of enlarged photos of his accomplishments, wrote crude jokes on the back of them visible to the audience, but unbeknownst to the Olympian. Later, both guys got tag team partners and went on to renew their great in-ring chemistry as members of the legendary SmackDown Six, where they really started to take their work to another level against each other and others.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Edge, Hair vs. Hair (Judgment Day 2002)

13. Shane McMahon

The idea behind pitting Shane McMahon with Kurt Angle at King of the Ring 2001 was brilliant. Take a guy who knows no limits athletically and put him against a guy who knows no limits mentally. The end is result is a pro wrestling masterpiece that resulted in Angle suplexing the younger McMahon through a glass stand not once, but twice (it didn’t break like it was supposed to). Really, these guys put on a show and used the capabilities of a street fight to deliver something akin to The Miz vs. Shane, except better. Only reason Shane isn’t higher is because WWE unfortunately never revisited this matchup.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Shane McMahon, Street Fight (King of the Ring 2001)

12. Jeff Jarrett

Angle’s feud with Jeff Jarrett could have been top-3 had the matches been better. Don’t get me wrong, this was a case of two professionals setting aside a very legitimate personal beef to entertain the fans wanting to see a real life issue play out on their television sets, and both guys deserve all the credit in the world for making it work. But the matches…they just came up a little bit short. And while this feud was ultra-personal (what with both men sharing the same woman by law or otherwise for a brief while), the matches were just a little slow for me. I love an old-school pro wrestling match, but when it comes to Angle’s greatest rivals, the cream of the crop needs to include guys who could match the intensity and athleticism that he brought to the table, in addition to strong psychological set pieces, which this feud was certainly not short on.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Jeff Jarrett (Genesis 2009)

11. Rey Mysterio

Though he wasn’t part of the initial crew of incoming WCW stars, Rey Mysterio came in HOT, and a lot of that is owed to Kurt Angle and the phenomenal opener these two put on at SummerSlam ‘02. It might be one of my favorite matches to open a pay-per-view ever. It was total, nonstop action (pardon THAT pun) from the get-go, and while Angle got the better of the smaller man (as he usually did in almost all of their SmackDown encounters), Mysterio still came out of the match looking as good as he ever had, and of course, went on to be part of the SmackDown Six. The rest as they say is history, and I’m happy they got to wrestle one more time on Angle’s retirement tour.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Rey Mysterio (SummerSlam 2002)

10. AJ Styles

Over the first three or four years of Angle’s TNA run, he and AJ Styles could do no wrong with one another. Angle’s approach to wrestling Styles seemed similar to his approach in working with Mysterio, another high flyer. On top of that, even the Styles of 2010 may have been more versatile than Mysterio, and it was around this time that the Angle series did wonders in helping get the Phenomenal One over as “the guy” in TNA… for at least a little while until the company was overcome with a yellow and red tidal wave, if you know what I mean. But if you want to go back even further, Styles playing the dumb, yet deadly lackey in the Angle Alliance was really a throwback to Angle’s early WWF character in a lot of ways, which I always thought to be a nice homage.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. AJ Styles (Genesis 2010)

9. Steve Austin

Some might wonder why Austin isn’t higher on this list. After all, he was a big influence on Angle as an entertainer, and both men took part in a slew of hilarious backstage skits during the Invasion angle, each one seemingly more memorable than the last. What prevents Austin from being higher has to do with the context of the times. Both Austin and Angle were turning back and forth, playing double agent for both the Alliance and WWF, and don’t forget, Austin also had his initial heel turn at WrestleMania X-7 as well. That sort of prevented them from building the necessary momentum, but I was a fan of the match they had at Vengeance ‘01 and always thought there was potential for more with Angle and Austin.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Steve Austin (Vengeance 2001)

8. The Rock

The Rock was perhaps underrated as an in-ring performer, and maybe that had to do with his working heavier guys for most of his career, but whenever he squared up against a Kurt Angle or Chris Benoit, you’d really get a glimpse at everything he was capable of as a wrestler. Of course, the nature of Angle’s character at the time really played to Rocky’s strengths on the mic, so this was very much a symbiotic relationship. It’s not as if the two wrestled an epic series of matches or anything like that, but both were fixtures during some of the company’s most important storylines of the early-2000s, including the Invasion angle and the Six-Man Armageddon Hell in a Cell match that likely inspired the Elimination Chamber. Still, Angle’s best work with The Rock came in an epic triple threat match that also included The Undertaker, no doubt an honorable mention on this list.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. The Rock vs. The Undertaker (Vengeance 2002)

7. Samoa Joe

With all that Angle had done by the time he reached TNA, it could have been easy for someone in a similar position to rest on their laurels. But having a guy like Samoa Joe, who was tough, hungry and quite frankly, ready to work with someone on Angle’s level, really fueled that back nine run. It’s no wonder that I’ve ranked Joe the highest of all of Angle’s opponents in TNA; often times when you get a really proficient, smaller, technical wrestler and you put him with a bigger guy who, while not as technically sound, could wrestle a good match in his own right, you’re going to get magic. The same thing happened with Daniel Bryan and Takeshi Morishima in RoH. Samoa Joe, at the time, was one of the few wrestlers who incorporated legitimate shoot style/MMA holds into his work, and that was just fine for Angle, who on-again/off-again trained MMA around that time and even once got an offer to join the UFC. It’s for these reasons that their match at Lockdown 2008 is the one to check out. With all the odes to mixed martial arts included in the match, there really wasn’t anything like it, especially for the time.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe (Lockdown 2008)

6. Chris Benoit

Chris Benoit might have been higher on this list had it not been for unfortunate later events. No, Benoit did not win an Olympic gold medal, or even compete at a very high level of amateur wrestling, but when it came to matching the Kurt Angle-esque level of work ethic and in-ring mastery, Benoit could do it move-for-move because they were very much the same guy: tough, athletic, technical and explosive. Where Angle separated himself from Benoit was in angles (pun intended) and on the microphone. But on the other hand, that made Angle the perfect heel for Benoit and Benoit the perfect face for Angle: two guys so similar, yet so different all at once.

And when you look at the body of work in Angle’s WWE run, he didn’t wrestle anybody as consistently for as long as he wrestled Benoit over that four-year stretch. They tagged for a while somewhere in the middle, and that only made them work better together because their WWE Championship match at the Royal Rumble in 2003 is to this very day my favorite title match in Royal Rumble history.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit (Royal Rumble 2003)

5. Shawn Michaels

Do you believe in soulmates? Okay…bad question. But what about two guys who were just MEANT to have a wrestling match together? Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels might just fit the bill. Their match at WrestleMania 21 stole the show, although did it really? Remember, this was a time where WWE would frequently cross brand lines to create memorable WrestleMania matches and even as a kid who was absolutely not smart to pro wrestling, I remember looking to this match nearly as much as I was looking forward to Cena and Batista’s crowning moments.

When you put Angle in the ring with Michaels, you’re only going to get five-star matches. There can be no build, no meaning to the match in any way, yet that’s still what you’re going to get. Granted, I loved the build to WrestleMania 21 and the motivation for the feud was simple, yet perfect: two icons looking to prove they were the very best at what they do. That said, don’t sleep on their other two matches, either: Vengeance 2005 and that Best 2 out of 3 Falls match on Raw.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels (WrestleMania 21)

4. John Cena

Two words: Ruthless. Aggression.

And what better foil to Kurt Angle than the guy who made his television debut against him, then went on to surpass him in box office appeal? What kept Cena from being even higher on this list was that it took him several more years before he really hit his stride inside the ring. Around this time, he needed guys like Angle and Chris Jericho to carry him through longer, main event matches and really leaned on his talking ability to make up for his deficiencies as a wrestler. Granted, his matches with Angle and wrestlers of the like were not perfect, and this is really how those “You Can’t Wrestle” chants came about, but the Survivor Series match marked a big step forward for Cena and the No Way Out match was just too perfect from storytelling standpoint. That guy who debuted in generic tights and no personality? Here he was, one match away from achieving his dream at WrestleMania, with one road block, one final test standing in the way: the man he debuted against. And this is why fans all over social media (and at live events) clamored so much for Cena to be the one to retire Angle, because perhaps no wrestler has meant more to Cena’s career than our Olympic Hero has.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. John Cena (No Way Out 2005)

3. Triple H

I’m not as high on the matches Angle would have with Triple H as some might be, but it cannot be denied that the Triple H-Kurt Angle-Stephanie McMahon love triangle was essential in establishing the Olympian as a main event-level character. Yes, Angle was a machine in the ring, but so many people cite his electric personality and comedic timing as the essential components to his pro wrestling persona. Triple H always had a knack for wanting to involve himself with the next big things in wrestling. I’m not blaming him! It’s all in good business. But without Triple H and without Stephanie McMahon, I am not saying Angle’s development as a character would have been stunted, but it certainly wouldn’t be what it became.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Triple H (No Way Out 2002)

2. Eddie Guerrero

Kurt Angle and Eddie Guerrero were two peas in a pod, and that’s what made them such compelling adversaries in the ring. Both were born entertainers, both possessed the gift of athleticism and both were tireless workers and perfectionists, sometimes to a fault. Both guys could just easily ignite the crowd with a great segment together as they could with a great match. If you don’t believe me, check out a segment from SmackDown back in the summer of 2004 when Angle goads Guerrero into attacking his “car,” which was later revealed to have actually belonged to Theodore Long. Their rivalry also extended backstage. One time, Guerrero shot a double on Angele after his goons – Jindrak and Reigns (Luther, not Roman) – were a little stiff with him at a SmackDown taping. Angle has remarked in the past that Guerrero’s work grew inconsistent as the heart condition that eventually claimed his life worsened, but when these guys were on, you would see magic in the squared circle. Look no further than the finish to WrestleMania XX.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Eddie Guerrero, WrestleMania XX (2004)

1. Brock Lesnar

Angle’s greatest opponents over the years have without question been the ones who can match the intensity and drive he brings to pro wrestling. Brock Lesnar has been known to take a match off here or there, but never with Kurt Angle. Every time these two stepped in the ring, there seemed to be this professional rivalry, as if each had something to prove to the other. Lesnar wanted to show he could meet the standard of an Olympic gold medalist, and Angle wanted to show he could still go toe-to-toe with the young bull. The WrestleMania XIX match exemplifies this. Read about some of the post-match carnage left in the wake of both men if you have the time, but make no mistake, Brock Lesnar will go down as Kurt Angle’s definitive rival.

Recommended match: Kurt Angle vs. Brock Lesnar, WrestleMania XIX (2003)