10 Best Wrestling Rivalries That Kept It All In The Ring
5. Kurt Angle Vs. Chris Benoit
Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle each had dozens of great matches in WWE, but wrestling each other always seemed to bring out the best in both men. They had excellent chemistry almost from the beginning, and while their feud often featured plenty of WWE’s more distracting soap opera elements, the wrestling stood out above all else.
Two hard-hitting, intense technicians, Benoit and Angle’s presence in a match practically guaranteed excellence. Their first truly great bout took place at WrestleMania X-Seven, and continued over the coming months, with Kurt eventually drawing a line under the feud’s first chapter by winning a Steel Cage match on a June 2001 episode of Raw.
The rivalry reignited in 2002, but broke off when Benoit and Angle embarked upon a brief (but enjoyable) run as uneasy tag partners. The union eventually imploded, however, and at the 2003 Royal Rumble, they produced what many consider to be the best match of either man’s WWE career. Two weeks later, they wrestled their last singles contest on an episode of SmackDown. It was an anticlimactic end to an impressive body of work, but their pay-per-view bouts were undeniable.