Kurt Angle Names 3 Former WWE Superstars As Some Of His Best Opponents Ever

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WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle has wrestled some of the greatest performers of all time, and for a large portion of the people he wrestled, they often had their best matches with the Olympic Gold Medallist. Angle has since retired from wrestling, but made a special appearance on a recent edition of Chris Jericho's "Talk is Jericho" podcast, where he listed some of his best opponents and his best matches with them, including Jericho, citing their match at WWE No Way Out 2000 as their best. However, Angle's favorite opponent of all time was Chris Benoit.

"Benoit, I felt like I was looking a mirror," Angle said. "He was so intense, he had that intensity, he might have perhaps been more intense than I was, and I loved the way he worked, the way he moved. We had such incredible chemistry that every match we ever had was a classic. I had so much respect for Chris and what he was able to do in pro wrestling, especially for his size. He was a man that was probably what? 5'8? 5'9? But he wrestled like he was a monster, he was huge. I had so much respect for him and the chemistry that we had."

Angle stated that his match with Benoit at the 2003 Royal Rumble pay-per-view for the WWE Championship is his favorite match of all time for a number of reasons, with one being that there wasn't a single punch thrown in the entire bout. The only thing Angle said he would change about it was that he wasn't 100% going into it as he had just came off of having knee surgery a few weeks earlier.

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The Rabid Wolverine wasn't the only man who Angle had great chemistry with as Jericho pointed out he had two matches at back-to-back WrestleMania's with two of the greatest of all time; Eddie Guerrero and Shawn Michaels. Angle had this to say about Guerrero:

"I don't want to say he was better in WCW, but he was healthier. Once he had that car wreck and he busted his femur, his leg, he wasn't the same. But Eddie was still better than everybody else, even after that, so I would have loved to have wrestled Eddie in his prime, and not to say he wasn't in his prime when I wrestled him, but we knew that Eddie had to work around that stuff." Angle praised Guerrero's ability to work around his limitations in WWE to become a better storyteller, citing him as a trailblazer for wrestlers around the world.

As for Michaels, Angle had nothing but nice things to say about their match at WrestleMania 21 in 2005. "Shawn was so magical, he had so much talent, he looked effortless when he was out there doing whatever he did. He made everything look so easy, he just had a knack for pro wrestling," Angle said. "He didn't want to tie up, he didn't want to practice anything, we practiced one thing...I mean that match was incredible." The Olympic Gold Medallist explained that after some matches he is left disappointed, and is only picked up when watching the footage back to see the crowd reaction and the little details on screen. However, Angle claims that after he got out of the ring with Michaels in 2005, he wasn't disappointed at all, and felt like he had the best match of his career.

Please credit "Talk is Jericho" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.