Examining Kurt Angle's Last 5 Major WWE Matches

You expect great things of a three-way WrestleMania world title bout featuring three of the biggest stars of WWE's Ruthless Aggression era, but this one - through no fault of anyone in the ring, really - rather failed to live up to the pre-match hype.

The first reason for this was time constraints: they were given just 11-and-a-half minutes, which - for the Royal Rumble winner's coronation match - is on the low side (this is made particularly galling by the fact that 10 minutes of this pay-per-view was spent on a Torrie Wilson-Candice Michelle "Playboy Pillow Fight and a handicap match featuring The Boogeyman, Booker T, and Sharmell).

On top of that, you had the contrarian Chicago crowd, who refused to play along with WWE's "fairytale" narrative, spending most of the match cheering nominally-heel Angle at the expense of poor Rey Mysterio, who had pledged to honour the memory of Eddie Guerrero by lifting the title on wrestling's Grandest Stage.

There were decent moments - particularly when Rey and Angle were left in the ring on their own (sorry, Randy) - but it needed at least 10 or 15 minutes more to really be the WrestleMania classic we were promised.