On Monday’s episode of Raw, Kurt Angle announced his opponent for his retirement match at WrestleMania would be Baron Corbin.
The reveal was met with a negative reaction from the audience at the Allstate Arena in Chicago after a week of speculation regarding the identity of Angle’s opponent.
Corbin came out after the match and said it doesn’t matter what Angle has done in his career, the fans will only remember what happens in his final match.
The announcement was followed by Angle defeating Chad Gable and receiving a chant of “Thank you, Kurt” after the match.
Kurt Angle isn’t one of HHH’s buddies and he went to TNA so they were never going to treat him like an actual legend. Just a terrible run overall and the guy was used very poorly.
Maybe one of the saddest retirement matches on a major card ever? I doubt this match gets any heat and lasts about 5-8 minutes. John Cena would have been a better choice.
Although I would’ve thought a sudden and substantial loss to a guy who doesn’t win should’ve been a big enough indicator of this being a red herring…now I hope they actually go through with this.
Now I want to see if “fans” will actually support a guy in his retirement match or act like assholes and try ruin it.
Is there any way they can make this a fun match? Kurt Angle vs Corbin puts me to sleep thinking about it. But maybe if it follows the path of Sting vs HHH at WM31 with some run ins it could be fun.
But who could even interfere that has a history with Angle and/or Corbin that would be good to see? Having other midcard faces and heels like Lashley or Chad Gable doesn’t make this match sound any more fun.
Let’s face it, at this point angle can’t have a entertaining one on one match to save his life. They tried on multiple time to give him a chance to prove he could still go and he showed that he can’t hang with the new generation.
I get that corbin isn’t a popular choice but he’s a high profile guy on the roster, he’s getting tremendous heat, either because fans truly hate him or just because he’s doing is job well, and at less they have a history and will bookend the feud between the 2.
They could have gone with anybody else and while it would have made for a bigger marquee match, then the bell has to ring and let face it, you would have put anybody else with angle and the match would have been as terrible as this one but knowing angle, he would have wanted to go between 20 to 30 minutes and the longer he wrestled, the higher the risk of injuries for angle.
So that way, you can have angle come in, squash corbin, celebrate with his peers and leave without making his legacy more of a joke then it already is.
The “waste” will be if he appears unadvertised… which despite assumptions that he’ll be there and leaks that will probably start trickling out soon, looks like it might actually be the case.
Hopefully Corbin and Angle can be quick because they need to save enough time for Batista and HHH to go 30 minutes at least. Plus, they need to set aside close to 10 minutes for HHH’s yearly routine of playing dress-up in front of the Mania audience for his entrance.