It’s Thursday, and it’s time once again for my weekly throwback to the past. Thanks for the great feedback on last week’s edition. In case you missed it, Throwback Thursday will be a weekly column that’s dedicated to a past wrestling show or event. For today’s Throwback Thursday, I’ve decided to talk about the classic encounter between Kurt Angle and Shane McMahon at the King of the Ring 2001.
If Shane McMahon is remembered for anything during his tenure with the WWF/E, it was his willingness to sell his body out for whatever match he was in at the time. He was never the most polished performer, but his unquestionable dedication to getting his opponent over by going to unheard of lengths made him a memorable character at the very least. Perhaps the worst beating of his pro-wrestling career came on June 24, 2001 when he met up with Kurt Angle at King of the Ring for a Street Fight.
There wasn’t a lot of build to the match. The WCW/ECW Invasion storyline was just about to get underway and Shane had just revealed his plans while dumping on Angle, so they booked a match between the two on the same night Angle would be attempting to defend his King of the Ring crown. During the course of the night, Angle wrestled three times, which worked out at about 45 minutes worth of ring time. McMahon aided him in winning his opening match against Christian, but cost him the final against Edge.
This led to their showdown, which started off innocently enough. Angle mauled Shane for a while and after that, they went back and forth for a bit before making their way up the ramp. It was there that McMahon gave Angle a suplex that injured his tailbone. When they got all the way to the stage set for a big spot where Angle was supposed to belly-to-belly suplex McMahon through some glass, Angle didn’t have enough strength to create he needed to actually break the glass, so McMahon landed on his head.
Shane McMahon was a bloody mess
Being that he (Shane) is insane and, as I mentioned before, he’ll do anything to get the match over, Shane told Kurt to do it again. The second time the glass broke, but instead of letting that be the lone high spot in the match, they actually decided to have Angle belly-to-belly suplex him back through another pane of glass out on to the entrance ramp. Seriously, this was nuts!
Shane was bloodied and beaten to a pulp. He was carted back to the ring where he kept going at it with Angle and eventually pulled off an AngleSlam on Kurt, but Angle kicked out. After trading blows, Shane was catapulted into the turn buckle and Kurt got Shane on his shoulders to AngleSlam him from the top rope and finish off one of the best matches of all-time.
That match was, by far, the best match of Shane’s career and one of the greatest pure fights in company history, so I thought I’d wrap things up by including that match, as well as Shane’s thoughts on it, below:
If you liked this article, feel free to share it on Facebook and Twitter, or leave a comment below telling me your thoughts on one of the best matches in WWF/E history!
Thanks for reading guys and, as always, you can follow me on Twitter @kwAsktheHeel
Karl Walker
Its fun, there's not a whole lot of things in life that are fun any more, you have your favourites cheer them, you have people you don't like you boo them. You don't have to worry about someone punching you in the face because you boo them. Because that there job and passion. Thats why i love Pro - Wrestling! Huge Wrestling Fan and Host of #AsktheHeel http://www.youtube.com/oswnetwork http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Ask-the-Heel/294249234005620
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