Kurt Angle Discusses What It Was Like Wrestling Ric Flair
Kurt angle has given his firsthand account of grappling with the man that many call the greatest of all time, Ric Flair.
Many wrestling fans have put both Flair and Angle on their shortlists of greatest wrestler of all time or on their personal Mt Rushmore of wrestling.
Both of them are among the most decorated wrestlers of the past fifty years. Both of them are in multiple Halls of Fame. And both of them were and still are venerated for their in-ring skills.
But what happened when the two of them crossed paths and wrestled one-on-one? According to Angle, it was simply “lots of fun”.
Kurt Angle really enjoyed wrestling Ric Flair in 2005
Speaking on his Kurt Angle Show podcast, Angle described now Flair, knowing he was way past his physical prime, still did his best to be entertaining by working around his limitations and doing stuff that fans recognized, no matter how silly it was.
“Ric was a lot of fun to wrestle because he did a lot of stuff that was — he did a lot of stuff that people recognized.
He had these certain bumps that he took, that he always took. The one off the top rope where you flip him over. When you punch him and he does that face bump, where he does the silly thing and bumps forward.
So Ric had all these different bumps that he did, and he kept that in his repertoire as he got older.
Although he couldn’t wrestle like he used to at this point in time in 2005, he was still good. He was past his prime, though, so he did all those trademark moves, and he still was very entertaining, and he was a lot of fun to work with.”
Kurt Angle and Ric Flair only four televised matches together between 2002 and 2010, one of those being the 2005 Royal Rumble match.
The first one was a tag team match that saw Angle team with Vince McMahon to take on Flair and Triple H. They had two singles matches on RAW in 2005, one in June of that year and one in December. The final match between them was a house for TNA in 2010.
h/t WrestlingInc for the transcription