50 Must-See WrestleMania Matches

17. Kurt Angle Vs. Brock Lesnar – WrestleMania 19

CM Punk The Undertaker
WWE.com

Whenever this match is brought up, the first – and sometimes last – thing that gets brought up is Brock Lesnar’s botched attempt at a Shooting Star Press, where he under-rotated and dropped right down on his head. Ouch.

What fans forget is that this was an incredible match that showed just how on top of their game Lesnar and Kurt Angle were. The two amateur wrestling standouts closed one of the most underrated WrestleManias in history with an incredible performance that firmly established Lesnar as a top wrestler.

Angle was already one of the most reliable guys in the ring, but he had recently suffered a serious neck injury and underwent a radical procedure to cut the recovery time to a matter of weeks instead of months. He showed he hadn’t lost a step with this match.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.