10 Wrestlers Who Modelled Their Whole Style On Other Wrestlers

8. Jack Swagger - Kurt Angle

When Kurt Angle left WWE in 2006, the company quickly realised that the role of amateur-wrestler-turned-pro-wrestler was one that desperately needed to be filled. Having some on the card who carried legitimate sports pedigree and could throw together incredible mat sequences was a much bigger miss than they initially predicted.

Thus when Jack Swagger - an NCAA Wrestling Champion at the University of Oklahoma, and one of the highest-rated college wrestlers in the entire world - debuted in 2008, fans immediately labeled him as a shameless Angle rip-off. He was very patriotic, leaned into the amateur style, and even started doing the Ankle Lock. WWE are many things but subtle isn't one of them.

While Swagger worked hard his whole career to distance himself from these comparisons and, in truth, probably took up MMA purely so he could visualise whatever face he was caving in as belonging to the WWE official who invented 'We The People', the Angle angle was reasonably well deserved.

Speaking in an interview with SportBible he said; "When I first started watching wrestling [Angle] was the guy I watched ‘cos he was an amateur and an Olympian. That’s why I watch wrestling, for the technical aspect".