Kurt Angle Speaks On Holy Grail WWE Match With Owen Hart
Kurt Angle and Owen Hart's untelevised bout remains one of WWE's lost classic matches.
Kurt Angle called his lost WWE bout with the late, great Owen Hart "one of the best 15-minute matches" during a recent live tour with Inside the Ropes.
Owen and Kurt tied up for the first and only time in an untelevised Shotgun Saturday Night bout on 10 May 1999. Angle, who was new to the business, admitted that he "didn't really know what [he] was doing" when he was booked against Owen. Hart eased his concerns by telling him he'd call it in the ring, leading the then-rookie through proceedings.
Said Angle (h/t Sportskeeda):-
"Five days before Owen Hart passed away, Vince McMahon decided to have a dark match with Owen Hart and myself. At the time I had just started and I didn't really know what I was doing. Owen said, 'Don't worry, I'll call it in the ring'. I'm like 'holy sh*t, don't say that' because I don't know how to call it in the ring. He said 'don't worry, just listen to me and let me lead you'."
Continuing, the Olympian said the match was instrumental in building his confidence between the ropes. Owen, Angle claims, doesn't get the credit he deserves despite being "every bit as good" as his brother Bret:-
"We had one of the best 15-minute matches and he made me build my confidence to a level that it never was before because he carried me through this match, and the match turned out to be a pretty damn good match. And I had just started a couple of months prior to that. So Owen Hart, he doesn't get enough credit for how good he was. I think Bret gets most of the credit for being the best wrestler in the family, but Owen Hart was every bit as good as Bret Hart."
Owen passed away on 23 May 1999, doing so after he fell while being lowered to the ring during WWE's Over the Edge pay-per-view, plummeting 78 feet when his safety harness came loose. His lost match with Angle remains a holy grail for footage-hungry wrestling fans.