Kurt Angle says much was cut from his WrestleMania 22 match

WrestleMania 22 has become one of the more underrated, overlooked editions of the show in recent years, and nothing better exemplifies that than the Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton vs. Rey Mysterio triple threat match that took place on the show.

The three stars had to follow the spectacle that was Shawn Michaels almost literally dragging Vince McMahon to a good match and got the short end of the stick time-wise — especially compared to the other world title match on the show — but these three pros rolled with it and pulled off a fun nine-minute sprint for the World Heavyweight Championship.

Given how abbreviated the match was, it isn’t surprising to hear that aspects of the match were left out to accommodate the time constraints.

Kurt Angle talks about his WrestleMania 22 triple threat match.

On his The Kurt Angle Show podcast, Angle discussed the circumstances that led to that triple threat falling short of the 10-minute mark (h/t to Fightful’s Gisberto Guzzo for the transcription):

"“We had like 21 minutes for our match, including entrances, and the entrance was pretty long as it was. So my entrance was 2 minutes, Randy’s was 2 minutes. Rey’s had to be 8 minutes. So you add that together, that’s 12 minutes. We only had 9 minutes to wrestle in one of the co-main events of WrestleMania. We had to cut a lot of stuff. It was a really difficult match to do, especially a triple threat match. It’s really hard to cut stuff out because you have to have all three people in unison with each other knowing what’s going on next.“The only thing I’m thinking is ‘we’re not going to have enough time,’ and we didn’t. So we had to cut some stuff out and we actually sped the match up. It was a higher-paced match because of that.”"

Angle did not factor into the decision in that match, as Mysterio pinned Orton to win his first World Heavyweight Title, capping off a story that featured a few tasteless moments centered around exploiting Eddie Guerrero’s death (namely Orton telling Mysterio that Guerrero was “in hell”).

Mysterio would hold the championship for 112 days — a period where he lost non-title matches clean far too often — before losing the title to King Booker at The Great American Bash 2006.

As for the rest of the WrestleMania 22 card, the other highlights included the stellar second Money in the Bank Ladder Match (won by Rob Van Dam), Edge and Mick Foley’s Hardcore Match, Mickie James vs. Trish Stratus for the WWE Women’s Championship, and the main event between John Cena and Triple H for the WWE Championship.

You can listen to the rest of the podcast by clicking this link.