[2001-04-01-WWF-Wrestlemania X-SEVEN] Chris Benoit vs Kurt Angle

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, here it is. The match that killed my diehard WWF fandom. This match came in my younger years when I had just started getting into matches from the past and wrestling from around the world. I was no longer concerned about things like the Monday Night ratings, or who was better, Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels. With the influx of talent into the WWF, I really thought I could handle all the bullshit so long as they put guys in the position to have great matches on PPV as they'd done with Hart and Michaels. I desperately wanted this to be a great match. It was a match that HAD to be four stars, at a time when matches being four stars was all that mattered to me. And it wasn't. It wasn't four stars in 2001 and it's not four stars in 2019. And so I quit watching the WWF religiously. Ironically, they'd go on to produce the wrestling I wanted to see during the Smackdown Six era and beyond but I'm not sure whether I could have stomached the bullshit it took to reach that point.

The amateur wrestling at the start was nice and probably more than you should reasonably expect from a WWF bout, but everything after that was nondescript. It wasn't bad but it wasn't special in any way, shape or form. There was a lot of great stuff in the Benoit vs. Jericho feud. A lot more great stuff than I ever gave that feud credit for in real time. But there weren't those sort of details here. Aside from a few counters, there was nothing that made you think you were watching two of the best. The match never got going and it sure as heck never made me think, "oh, you were wrong about this bout all those years." I dunno if it was because Angle wasn't ready for the kind of bout I wanted or because the match was short due to time constraints. They ended up having a divisive match at the Royal Rumble 2003 that I personally liked but this remains a disappointment to me years after the sting has gone. 

[cactus]

The opening features some intense amateur style technical exchanges. Angle is distraught about Benoit tapping him a few weeks previously, so this match is built about Angle freaking out when ever Benoit goes for the crossface. I wish Angle got more chances to show of his personality. Just as these two start bringing out the big spots, Angle rolls up Benoit to steal the victory. Maybe having an intense technical battle wasn't going to pop the majority of the 60,000+ Attitude Era fans in the stadium, but Angle and Benoit went out there and wrestled the way they wanted to. Your typical WWF fan would eventually start appreciating technical wrestling like this as the 2000's rolled on. 
★★★¼