June 24, 2001, Kurt Angle defeats Christian Cage then known solely as Christian in the semi-finals of the WWE King of the Ring in under ten minutes. More than five years later, the two will lock up once again at TNA’s Against All Odds on February 11, 2007.
Though the match will in all likelihood last more than ten minutes—unless TNA really wants to piss off its fans—the storyline and dynamic of the match is very similar. Both competitors are heels or at least have heel undertones and both are fighting for a common prize. Perhaps most importantly Christian is going into the match as the underdog trying to pull out a victory over the irresistible force that is Kurt Angle.
However, further back than the King of the Ring 2001, there was a loose connection between four wrestlers, who would go onto have a number of great matches both during and since that time. Referred to as Team ECK in one promo, which stood for Edge, Christian, and Kurt, the team would later be joined by Rhyno following his debut in the then WWF. Since then the group has often been referred to as Team RECK by fans, though mainstream wrestling programs tend to leave the team nameless.
During a time when Angle was trading the then WWF Championship, with such talents as the Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Edge and Christian stood as the nucleus of the group. When the team began to unravel, so did the tag team of Edge and Christian, which in Edge’s case helped propel him to superstardom.
This was accomplished through a surprisingly brief program in which the two, who were still being promoted as “brothers” fought against one another for the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Christian took an early lead in the feud, though he got a far less than clean victory over Edge for the title. Subsequently, Edge won the belt back less than a month later.
Unfortunately the feud was lost in the shuffle that was the WCW and ECW invasion of the WWF. Edge would go onto have several matches with Test, which while better than one could expect, were far below the match quality of Edge’s encounters with Christian. As a result of this Christian began on a track, which saw him pushed further and further away from the limelight, although with some memorable bright spots. Despite Christian more often than not bringing his best to the table, he left the WWE as little more than a glorified jobber in 2005.
Rhyno faced an even worse path than Christian as a neck injury sidelined the master of the Gore for more than a year. When Rhyno returned to the WWE, for a time he was allied and later feuded with Chris Benoit. However, unlike his first run with the company, when Rhyno returned to the WWE he won no titles and was lost in the midcard until being released days after Wrestlemania 21.
On the more optimistic side of the subject Kurt Angle consistently remained at or near the top of the card for the five years he remained in the WWE following the split of Team RECK. That is not to say that life was always sunny side up for Angle as his body deteriorated to the point where physically he was a shell of his former self.
The four have had several programs with one another of varying levels of success in recent years, first beginning in the WWE and later being transported to TNA. The matches involved in these feuds have generally been above average and even great at times.
Kurt Angle managed to have a somewhat entertaining feud with Edge in 2002. Though the two competitors had more than enough talent to make their matches standout, the rivalry was dragged down by a lack of believable heat between the two. The premise of one of these encounters even saw the two in a hair versus hair match that can still be reflected off of the top of Angle’s head to this day.
While this may have been a believable blow off match in 1970’s Mexico in the United States, losing one’s hair does not bring the same sort of shame as found in Mexican wrestling. Fortunately another match was made between the two, which took place in a steel cage and delivered much more than the encounter leading up to it.
On the TNA side of the aftermath of Team RECK, Christian and Rhyno, now spelled Rhino had a program, which was based largely around their former friendship. The meeting between the two at Bound for Glory, which was promoted as an 8-Mile Street Fight was nothing to write home about. Still, the promos leading up to the match and after allowed Christian to demonstrate his talents as a heel in a way he had not done for over a year. Likewise Rhino was able to display what were at least semi-believable levels of intensity during his promos.
Similar to the Angle and Edge feud the bouts between Christian and Rhino ended with a phenomenal cage match. Rhino, who one would most likely never note as a great technical wrestler brought his A-game to the table and Christian did the same. Though this was far from a technical classic, the two utilized their abilities to perform impressive moves with brawling skills to create a classic on a different level.
Perhaps why remnants of Team RECK continue to exist more than half a decade after the group self-destructed is because of the chemistry that exists among the group members. In this way the team is comparable to the Radicalz, which consisted of Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn and Dean Malenko.
Before jumping over to the then WWF in early 2000, Benoit and Guerrero had been having fantastic matches with one another on American television as early as 1995. Even before this, the two had worked together in Japan so by the time they got to the then WWF, their chemistry was solid.
With Edge the only member of the former Team RECK left in the WWE, one can only speculate if further legendary matches will occur involving some combination of the four following Against All Odds. As all four remain active and continue to show degrees of greatness whether it is in promos or in in-ring skills, each member acts as a valid reason to keep watching either WWE or TNA.
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