Kurt Angle has revealed that his match with The Undertaker at No Way Out 2006 is the second favourite of his entire career.
By early 2006, Kurt Angle had done pretty much everything there was to do in WWE. He’d been a main event player for a six years, a multiple-time World Champion, and had come to be regarded as one of the best performers in the modern era.
Despite being drafted to Raw in the summer of 2005, Angle made a shock return to SmackDown on January 12th 2006 to win a Battle Royal for the World Heavyweight Championship. The unplanned switch came after World Champion Batista tore his bicep on January 6th, forcing him to vacate the title.
With Angle now the champion, he headed into a short feud with The Undertaker, which resulted in a match between the pair at No Way Out. The bout was acclaimed by fans and wrestling media alike, with the two men bringing out the very best in one another for the best part of half an hour.
The pair traded holds and submissions, with The Deadman wrestling a very different match to his usual fare.
Speaking on his podcast The Kurt Angle Show, available via AdFreeShows, the WWE Hall of Famer named matches with Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit and this match with The Undertaker as his favourites.
“My second favourite is with Undertaker at No Way Out 2006,” Angle said. “I had a match with him and it lasted 30-minutes and it was incredible. The false finishes, and the submission trade-offs, it was a really good match and told a great story. Undertaker is a really incredible worker, especially for a big guy. He’s so athletic for his size and I had great chemistry with him.”
In the end, Angle retained his World Championship and survived a rematch before being defeated by Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania 22.
After WrestleMania Angle was drafted to ECW to act as the figurehead for the newly relaunched third brand, but was gone from the company in August, only three months later. Angle wouldn’t return to WWE until more than a decade later in 2017.
