The former Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle spoke on the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show about who he believes is the greatest wrestler of all time. Angle was asked by a fan if he was able to pick one wrestler all time that he could work with, who would that be and why and here’s what Angle had to say in response.
“It is Bret Hart because I believe that he’s the greatest wrestler of all time,” Angle said. “I believe that with his in-ring performance, there’s nobody better. I would say Shawn Michaels and Chris Benoit are close, even myself, but I still put Bret up there [on top].
“Don’t get me wrong, a Ric Flair needs to be up there too because he’s the man. Ric was a great wrestler and could get people interested in the psychology of the match, but he was also very entertaining. He took a lot of crazy Ric Flair bumps, you knew what he was going to do and you wanted him to do it. Bret Hart was just the best overall technician I have ever seen in my life.”
Continuing to talk about Bret Hart, Angle said he tried to get the Hall of Famer to come back to WWE following the Montreal Screwjob to wrestle him at WrestleMania 18. Being that the incident in Montreal was five years prior, Angle thought he could get Hart to come back and wrestle him at a show that already featured Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock, but unfortunately the match never happened.
“I did contact Bret,” Angle said. “I called him and said ‘Hey, I want to wrestle you at WrestleMania, I think it would be a dream match. You won’t have to do any of the work, I’ll do all the bumping and selling.’ He immediately said no. I understand now [why he said that], later on in my career, I started losing a step and I didn’t like what I saw.
“When you get older and you start slowing down, you can’t put on the performance that you did in your prime, you don’t want to do it anymore. A lot of athletes have a lot of pride and I have a lot of pride and Bret does too. He doesn’t want to wrestle Kurt Angle unless he can perform like he’s in his prime so I get why he said no.”
