Why Classic WWE Match Left Kurt Angle Severely Worried

Kurt Angle is not short of a legendary match or two, but now he’s lifted the lid on what really went on before one of his all-time WWE classics.

The list of stars Kurt Angle has shared the ring with at WrestleMania over the years reads like a who’s who of current and future WWE Hall of Famers. Chris Jericho, Kane, Brock Lesnar, Eddie Guerrero, Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio, Randy Orton, Triple H, and even Stephanie McMahon have gone up against Angle on the grandest stage of them all.

But one of those bouts stands out more than most. And for Kurt Angle, it might have been the one that gave him the most heartache.

Speaking during an Inside the Ropes show, Kurt Angle explained the process for his WrestleMania 21 match with Shawn Michaels and how he was left sweating because the Heartbreak Kid didn’t want to go over the bout before they stepped in the ring with each other:

Shawn and I get together a week before Wrestlemania. Every day we have time to put our match together, the whole Wrestlemania week. I’m like, ‘You want to get started on the match?’ He says, ‘Well, we’re not going to move around. We’re going to just sit here.’

I said, ‘Okay.’ I was used to going over the spots and making sure I had it down. He’s like, ‘Just don’t worry about that stuff. It’ll come in time.’ I was like, ‘Oh, God. Here we go. This guy’s got a big ego.’ We end up bullsh*tting that day. We don’t even talk about the match. I’m like, ‘Oh sh*t, we just sat here for two hours and talked about personal things.’ I was like, ‘Shawn, when are we going to talk about the match?’ He says, ‘Come back tomorrow.’ So, I come back the next day.

We have like five days to get ready for this match. Shawn says, ‘Okay, we’re not going to go over it. We’re not going to rehearse it, but let’s talk about some spots.’ So, we talked about a few spots and what we wanted to do. The only move that we went over in the ring was that Shawn was going to get me in an arm bar, and I was going to lift him up over my head, and he was going to drop behind me and sunset flip me and get a false finish. We had to go over that to see if I was strong enough to pick him up. That’s all we went over.

Everything else was talked about, but not rehearsed. I was like, ‘I don’t even know if I can tie up with this guy.’ A lot of times, you don’t tie up with a person, and you never get a feel for them. You don’t know if you have good chemistry with them. You might have bad chemistry. You never know. Shawn didn’t want to do this stuff. He didn’t even want to tie up. So the first time I touched Shawn literally was at Wrestlemania. It was my first tie-up with him, first anything that we ever did besides that one little spot that we just went over.

Kurt Angle Says Shawn Michaels To Blame For WrestleMania Classic

In the end, it turned out alright as the match has gone down in history as one of the best in-ring displays in WWE history, and Kurt Angle said the reason for that is simply Shawn Michaels:

We had the best chemistry. It was like we worked together for five years. I can’t give myself credit because I’m not that kind of person, but Shawn has to be the reason. He’s never had a bad match with anybody. If anything, he’s had 4 and 5-star matches with everybody, but planning for it was unbelievable because we really didn’t plan that much.

I had the best match of my career at Wrestlemania 21 against Shawn Michaels, and that says the kind of athlete and superstar Shawn really is. [h/t Fightful]