10 Wrestlers Who Ruined Gimmick Matches For Everybody Else

5. Kurt Angle - Iron Man Match

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Some of the inclusions you’ll see in this article are here due to sheer illogicality, others are here for going too extreme, and then there are those that are featured for just setting an impossible bar for anybody to reach.

Step forward, Kurt Angle.

The Iron Man Match was made famous by Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XII, but it was Kurt Angle that took this particular gimmick and completely made it his own.

Other wrestlers have obviously shined in Iron Man contests over the years, yet nobody has delivered to the ridiculously high standards of the Olympic Hero. No person has competed under Iron Man rules more than Kurt Angle – Bret Hart and Angle both tied as having had three such matches – but Kurt raised the bar to the point where it seems impossible for anybody to ever do with the Iron Man Match what the Pittsburgh native did.

The eleven-time World Champion battled Chris Benoit at Backlash 2009, Brock Lesnar on a September 2003 episode of SmackDown, and Shawn Michaels on an October 2005 Raw offering, and all matches were instant classics.

Showing that winning doesn’t mean everything, Kurt Angle actually lost all three Iron Man contests, yet his durability, technical prowess, and intense work rate mean Angle is synonymous with this particular gimmick.

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