Ranking EVERY WWE Champion From Worst To Best
20. Kurt Angle
It's a good job Kurt Angle could wrestle and talk circles around almost everybody he encountered within weeks of debuting in WWE, because the one skill he never truly mastered at the time was how to swim with the sharks politically.
Angle ate dirt over and over again in big matches against the likes of Triple H, The Undertaker and Stone Cold Steve Austin, but his talents were undeniable and he was Champion 11 months after debuting all the same. His maiden reign peaked at its end, with a No Way Out 2001 match against The Rock ushering in a new style of company main event teased throughout much of the 2000s. When he returned to the summit in 2001, 2002 and 2003, it was for much of the same.
On his own steam, Angle wasn't quite the box office draw of his some of his Attitude Era contemporaries, nor could he arrest the post-WrestleMania X-Seven business decline. But there was simply nobody more reliable than Angle at his peak, and each reign fell during a time in which he was virtually unimpeachable as the best all-rounder in the world.