Smackdown hasn’t been at its best for a very, very long time. It showed signs of life during Daniel Bryan’s Intercontinental, and final, championship reign, but it serves as little more than a dress rehearsal for Raw these days.
The matches are fine, but nothing spectacular. It’s hard to become invested in any of the matches, especially as you never know how much they’ve been manipulated in post-production – Roman Reigns always seem to receive big cheers.
In the early days of the brand split, Smackdown was essential viewing. With Triple H threatening to bore Raw’s audience to death with long, seemingly endless runs with the World Heavyweight Championship, Smackdown shone. One of the greatest rivalries to come out of that period, and possibly one of the greatest of all time, was Kurt Angle vs. Brock Lesnar.
Two of the most gifted wrestlers to ever grace the WWE stole the show whenever they squared off. Their match at Wrestlemania 19, despite featuring a nasty Lesnar botch, has gone down as a classic. After Angle returned from injury, the pair wasted no time to resume their rivalry. They clashed again at Summerslam and later in a triple threat match with Big Show at Vengeance 2003 in a fantastic encounter, Kurt Angle pinning Lesnar to win the WWE Championship.
Their rivalry reached its pinnacle soon after with the best Smackdown match of all time: Kurt Angle vs Brock Lesnar in a 60-minute Iron Man match.
If you’re looking for an example of how to tell a story in the ring, just watch this match. The two held nothing back, conveying their characters through gripping, impressively technical wrestling. Lesnar showed the ugly side he had recently been forming by beating Angle down with chair shots, helping Angle to go 1-0 up, but it had a lasting effect on the champion with Lesnar taking three falls in quick succession to go 3-1 up.
The pair traded suplexes throughout with Lesnar taking every cheap shot he could as the perfect heel, hitting Angle with his own championship belt at one point. He even managed to make Angle tap with his own submission, the Angle Lock.
Angle soon rallied, taking a 5-2 deficit to 5-4. To match the beast, Angle had some dirty tricks of his own, stealing Lesnar’s F-5 to inflict some serious damage to his knee with a ring post. The challenger limped around for the remainder of the match, helping Angle to close the gap to just one point. With the seconds ticking away, Angle punished Lesnar with the Angle Lock, but Lesnar held on to become the new champion.
The match has to go down as the best Smackdown match ever as it told a story perfectly while showcasing the very best in technical, impactful wrestling. It was the ideal way to bring the rivalry to an end, but with Angle recently speaking about returning to the WWE, could it be that we see these warriors battle one last time? Both speak very highly of each other and with Lesnar’s part-time contract coming to an end, it would be a masterstroke from the WWE to have the two fight one last time to bring an end to both of their illustrious careers.
Kurt Angle:
“I would say Brock Lesnar was my greatest rival. Because we both came from the same background to wrestling. We were always competitive; we’d even do shoot wrestling thing behind the back, just to see who was the better wrestler…”
Brock Lesnar:
“I have great respect for Kurt Angle. In 1996 when he won the [Olympic] gold medal, I was graduating high school. I followed wrestling internationally, collegiately…I mean, he was the best of the best. He was a guy I wanted to be like, I wanted to train like. Kurt and I had a relationship that I don’t have with a lot of other guys in the locker room, because of our roots and what we’ve done [in amateur wrestling]…”
One man can dream.
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