7 Things You Should Know About WWE Royal Rumble 2001

4. Angle's Win Over Triple H Was An Entertaining Heel Battle

There was an interesting dynamic to the WWE Title match with Kurt Angle defending the gold against Triple H. Both guys were heels, so it was tough for the fans to know who to root for. Heel vs. heel really doesn't work a lot of the time. Triple H had his wife Stephanie McMahon (it was just a storyline at that point) in his corner while Angle had his friend Trish Stratus, who was having a storyline affair with Chairman Vince McMahon. In addition to that, Triple H's feud with Steve Austin was really hot so that was hanging in the balance as well. Due to all of the outside factors, the match went off track a bit when Stephanie and Trish started brawling. JR made a famous call: "Stephanie is straddling Trish Stratus!" That probably led to some interesting fantasies among the fans. That brought Vince out, he got the girls out of there by literally carrying Trish over his shoulder and then the focus was back on the match. They set up for the finish by having referee Earl Hebner taking multiple bumps outside the ring. Hunter tried to use the WWE Title, Angle prevented that and Hunter hit a Pedigree. The fans seemed to favor him, but there was no ref to count the pin. That brought out Austin to go after Hunter and he destroyed him with the WWE title to the head, which led to Triple H bleeding. Austin hit a Stone Cold Stunner, Triple H was out and Angle crawled over for the cheap win as referee Hebner did one of his patented slow counts. Kurt and Hunter had a number of good matches between them. They never seemed to have a match of the year type of battle, but they were always above average matches just like this one was.