Kurt Angle’s 6 WWE SummerSlam Matches Ranked Worst To Best
Six fantastic matches from the early 2000's. It's true! It's true!
This is a common sentiment among wrestling fans, but Kurt Angle is one of my all-time favourite performers. Not only is he one of the best pure athletes to ever try his hand at sports entertainment, but he also gets how to tell a story in the ring better than just about anyone else.
When Kurt's TNA contract was expiring near the end of 2014 I was very hopeful that he'd find a way to get back to WWE and finish out his career proper. That didn't happen, but there's always the chance that he'll want to go another year or so and then try to negotiate again with Vince and company.
In the build-up to this Sunday's SummerSlam, I caught the Angle bug and decided to rewatch and rank every match that Angle has wrestled in at this event. His tenure for this show ranges consecutively from 2000-2005 with six matches. All matches in his archive are at least good, several are pretty great.
Angle's SummerSlam record is strong with five wins and one loss. His one loss was the only triple threat match on this list and he wasn't even the one involved in the fall. He's typically booked well at the biggest party of the summer.
The career of Kurt Angle has continued beyond WWE but it's still fun to relive the magic that he made while under their banner. The following six entries are every match Kurt wrestled at SummerSlam, ordered from worst to best...
6. 2005 Vs. Eugene
Out of the six matches on this list, this is the one downer. It's actually a fairly entertaining match but compared to the other five, it just doesn't hold up to the elite quality that they do.
The backstory for this was that Eugene was in possession of Kurt Angle's Olympic gold medals. This battle was for the claim to them. Also, 2004 Diva Search winner Christy Hemme was accompanying Eugene. Even after re-watching this I still didn't catch why she was with him.
The match was billed as having a No Time Limit stipulation but it only went about four minutes long. Eugene got in a few of his favourite moves, including a Stone Cold Stunner and a People's Elbow, but he ultimately tapped out when put into Angle's ankle lock submission.
The crowd was pretty against Eugene in this and as evidenced by the extremely short match time, apparently WWE wasn't too high on him at this point either. It was okay for what it was but definitely a class or two below the calibre of matches in this collection.