8 Times Stone Cold Steve Austin Lost Clean

2. Vs. Kurt Angle (Unforgiven 2001)

Whilst the Steve Austin heel turn of 2001 might have ultimately been very misguided, particularly when it was redoubled when he joined The Alliance, it did lead to an excellent feud with Kurt Angle who had turned babyface against Austin.

The pair had an outstanding match at SummerSlam the month prior, in one of the few PPV DQ finishes folks seem not to mind. Going into this return bout, in Angle's hometown of Pittsburgh, they hit a home run with the build-up. Angle had driven Austin nuts by spraying him with milk and pushing him, shackled, into a child's paddling pool. In return, Austin dropped Angle on his neck with a piledriver to a concrete floor, and WWE played up that Angle's Olympic neck injury had reoccurred.

With Angle's family at ringside, Kurt finally relieved Austin of the strap at Unforgiven when Austin tapped to the ankle lock. One tiny contention was that Austin's hand had slipped under the ropes and this was used to book the rematch two weeks later. You'd have to be the most pedantic person not to call this a clean win for Kurt though.