Let’s begin our journey with this mouth-watering morsel of sports entertainment.
The most common finish to a pro wrestling match is a pinfall (pinning an opponent’s shoulders to the mat for a three count), but ahead of this bout, submission expert Kurt Angle promised to make Rey Mysterio tap out to his finisher, the Ankle Lock (a promise he admittedly made quite a lot). Mysterio had been wrestling for different promotions since 1989, debuting at the age of 14, but this was his first pay-per-view for WWE and the self-professed ‘American Hero’ was going to teach him a lesson.
Often the best matches are the ones that are given more time, but these two delivered a classic in just 10 minutes. The heat that Angle could draw as a heel (bad guy) always made for a lively atmosphere, and his abrupt and stiff counters clashed perfectly with Mysterio’s rapid lucha libre style. Speaking of which, there are spots in this match which are now a regular occurrence in WWE, but as you can tell from the crowd reaction, this was the first time they’d seen the kind of offense that luchadores like Mysterio were capable of.
