By Chad Matthews /
16. Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle - WWE Championship (2001)
The WWE Championship match between Steve Austin © and Kurt Angle was the match of the night at one of the best Summerslams of all-time. Angle was coming off a very good couple of months where he began rounding the corner into one of the elite workers in the business. Good God that man was a prodigy, was he not? Less than three years after he had begun training to be a pro wrestler, he was out there having a classic match against one of the other greats of all-time. Austin was trying so hard to be a heel and, low and behold, it actually seemed to work on the San Jose crowd that night. He was going nuts as a character, giving new meaning to the phrase tough love in regards to his relationships with his underlings in the WCW/ECW Alliance. Angle had been a heel just a couple of months before, but his matches on Raw with Chris Benoit and at King of the Ring with Shane McMahon both iconic leaps forward for Angles performance level made the audience take notice and turn him into a protagonist. Since both were trying to get over new characters, it made for an interesting dynamic between Austin and Angle. The match at Summerslam made Angle sympathetic for the first time and showed that he could successfully play the role of the main-event babyface should the need arise.