10 Times Wrestlers Got Standing Ovations In Defeat
5. Chris Benoit (WWE Royal Rumble 2003)
Your writer is not somebody that's able to go back and watch Chris Benoit matches free of the thoughts of the last weekend of his life, nor one of those oddballs that calls for his name to be amongst the WWE Hall Of Fame announcements every year.
So in the absence of a need to go into detail about an objectively excellent professional wrestling match, it's perhaps better to judge the context of the ovation rather than the wrestler receiving it.
The 2003 Royal Rumble was a pretty great show blown to f*cking smithereens by an infamously awful World Heavyweight Championship match between Triple H and Scott Steiner that exposed and embarrassed the art form. As cynical a burial as 'The Game' ever managed during his not-at-all-hyperbolic Reign Of Terror, Hunter did the opposite of obscuring Steiner's limitations over nearly 20 exhausting minutes. Nothing about this protected, preserved or promoted the business. It merely left a career in tatters.
Such was the importance of Kurt Angle Vs Chris Benoit providing every kind of opposite. Fans respected these men before the bell let alone after it.
Valiant defeated babyface Benoit soaked up the cheers at the end, but domineering heel Angle would have received the same had the result been switched. They'd used their 20 minutes to erase any memories of the block of time that came before them.