[8.0] "Taker and Kurt just had an incredible chemistry. This is a small taste of what they get to showcase at No Way Out 2006 and it is so much fun to watch. Would recommend."
[10.0] "What a banger! I firmly believe that if it wasn't for the non-finish, this would be considered a top 5-10 Smackdown match ever. How cool was it that we got this 20 minute classic for free? It's unfortunate that it never gets talked about. Both Taker and Angle did a great job holding their own when it came to wrestling the other's style match. Taker's mat wrestling was solid while Angle threw punches and brawled when he needed to. I really enjoyed the back and forth nature of the match with neither man holding the momentum for too long. The selling and execution were on point. These guys had great chemistry and it's a shame that they never faced off more than they did."
[8.0] "Essentially a submission match, these two trade submissions and mat wrestle for the first part of this. The undertaker then gets Angle to the outside an starts the heat. The pace is on the slower side, but a few different throws are peppered in there to pick things up a time or two. Taker kicks out of the angle slam and angle kicks out of the chokeslam and then its back to trading submissions and pins. The two trade strikes and angle gets hardway juice. Intense contest. We get a fourth ankle lock which taker manages to counter and hits the last ride. Lesnar comes out and spoils things, what was otherwise an extremely good match for TV."
[8.0] "A forgotten smack down banger that surprising is never brought up. A great big match feel going into the match and this match doesnt fail to deliver Taker and Kurt had great chemistry which is why Im surprised they never had a proper 1 on 1 feud but nonetheless this match is great worth a watch 4/5"
[9.0] "This was a PPV quality match as far as I'm concerned. Tremendous mix of styles here as Angle's mat wrestling style is second to none and Undertaker also gets some decent mat work here as well. Some of the counters here looked amazing with the repeated Ankle Locks really selling his desperation to win. The selling is phenomenal as well as you feel the gradual wear and tear as it goes on. The interference from Lesnar sadly ends the match in a DQ but his beatdown at the end got him some heat from the crowd and it looked great."
[9.0] "I love the story of this match with Undertaker using his striking ability and strength advantage in this, and Kurt Angle would use his grappling ability in this match. Due to this story that they told here we get some cool counters like Undertaker countering the Ankle lock into the triangle, and Undertaker's last ride getting turned into a sunset flip to apply an ankle lock. I appreciated Kurt's determination to get the Ankle Lock locked in at all times in the 2nd half to keep the match on the mat. Brock beating both of them up at the end was awesome.****1/2"
[5.0] "It's honestly quite embarrassing how proudly WWE would wear on its sleeves how unprotected and meaningless all their wrestlers' finishers were. This was yet another in the long line of WWE's early 00s matches that was ultimately just a big, generic, lifeless finisher fest. That really sucks because this started off extremely well, with an engaging grappler-vs-striker story being told where Angle would dominate on the mat or whenever he could close space with Taker, but then Taker could easily gain control with his big strikes whenever he could instead create distance between himself and Angle. They played that story up well for the first half, with the added detail that both guys would naturally fail whenever they attempted to play the game of the other. So, how does this story of two different fighting styles clashing develop and eventually conclude here? It doesn't, because then they suddenly start trading finishers back and forth in the most boring "my turn, your turn" structure possible. None of those finishers were sold for long anyways, with the guy on the receiving end of a finisher able to very quickly recover and hit their own finisher only a few seconds later without any real struggle to sell that the finisher they just took was actually in any way a serious threat. How did WWE not get that treating their top stars' finishers like any other sort of mid-level moves would only diminish them? These two at least had a few creative and cool counters thrown in to set up some of those finishers, so that was a positive, but it didn't stop the match still feeling very mindless because they were literally just relying on their biggest stuff for the most low-effort crowd pops possible, without any of it feeling deserved. And to top it all off, Lesnar ran down to lay both men out with chair shots and thus cause a DQ finish. To be honest, I side with Lesnar here, since he was appropriately punishing these two supposed 'wrestling legends' for wrestling with such an amateurish "more is always more, what even is subtly or build-up? " mentality. This isn't the worst example of a WWE finisher-spam match from this era, since at least the first half was good and they executed their cheap finishers very well, but I can't really consider this a good match in any way. It's just plain mediocre. **3/4"
[9.0] "Amazing match. An underrated SD match. Loved Angle? s strategy of trying to keep things on the mat, going for the leg, trying to wear Taker down and keep him on his level. Taker keeps bring it to the feet, focusing on striking and brawling with Angle. Some wonderful transitions by Angle which are usually his weak point. Brock? s epic beatdown at the end was awesome. ****1/2"
[8.0] "Well paced match full of great counters, near falls and submission spots. Just a shame about the DQ ending (yeah, it's not a no contest so I don't know why that's the result on here). ***3/4"
[7.0] "The match was good like you expected from two of the best. But unfortunately the match doesn´t have a clean finish after Brock Lesnar interference."
[8.0] "I was less enamoured with this era of Smackdown mostly due to the over-emoting of lead announcer M Cole who dramatizes every event like it's the first of its kind he's ever seen. During this early part of his lengthy on-air WWE career, he's so tightly-wound and every sentence of his appears to end with an exclamation point. Nonetheless, I thought this was a very good bout in which both wrestlers, a worn-down Angle and a Taker who had moved beyond his classic brawling style into one greatly inspired by MMA, succeed at out-pointing the techniques and movesets of the other: Angle countering an attempt of a Dragon Sleeper with a hip roll, Angle rolling through a 'Last Ride' attempt into a Sunset flip positioning that makes it easy to apply an ankle lock, Taker repositioning his back as to get Angle into a Triangle and then into what would deemed 'Hell's Gate. ' Like the Benoit/HBK singles title bout from May of '04, the challenger was put-over stronger than the champ and the spotlight at the end was on the interfering son-of-a-gun... the crazed, 'misanthropic' Lesnar. 7. 5"
[9.0] "Excellent match, surprised they gave it away on free TV. Shame for the non-finish but it worked very well for the storylines going on at the time. Great back and forth between two guys who were in top form at the time, this was a wonderful era for Smackdown."
[8.0] "Das Match war einfach nur der absolute Hammer. Angle und Taker hatten einfach eine so großartige Chemie, dass es wirklich schade ist, dass es dieses Match nur 2 mal in so einer großen Konstellation gab. Wenn der Taker seine Counter-Moves auspackt, dann weiß man aber, dass die Kacke am Dampfen ist. Die 2 haben sich wirklich den Arsch aufgerissen, weshalb das Match ein unglaublich hohes Tempo hatte für deren Verhältnisse. Das Finish war dann natürlich nicht das Schmackhafteste, was man sich wünschen kann, aber leider ist so ein Ende bei einer TV-Show verständlich. Nicht so stark wie ihr Match bei No Way Out, welches zu meinen Lieblingsmatches gehört, aber ohne Zweifel eines der besten WWE-Matches in diesem Jahr. **** 1/4 (5)"
[9.0] "Eins von Kurt Lieblings Matches und heute sehr vergessen vor WWE NO WAY OUT 2006 war das hier das beste Match zwischen den beiden. Sehr starkes Titelmatch nur Brock hat am Schluss gestört (****1/2) . Kurt wollte noch so ein Match bei WrestleMania oder dem SummerSlam haben aber es wurde nur WWE NO WAY OUT 2006."
[9.0] "Technisch sehr gut, beide zwingen dem Gegner hier ihren Stil auf. Das Finish ist für so eine grandiose Auseinandersetzung etwas enttäuschend, führte allerdings storylinetechnisch einfach weiter."
[8.0] "Für eine normale TV-Sendung ein wirklich hochwertiges Match. Das DQ-Finish gefiel mir aber überhaupt nicht. Dennoch eines der sehr wenigen guten Matches des Takers aus seiner Biker-Zeit."
[9.0] "Wow, was für ein Match. Angle und der Taker beweisen ihre sensationelle Harmonie, und liefern einen Fight, der genausogut PPV-Main Event sein könnte. Der Eingriff stört kein bisschen, weil in dem Match eh kaum besser hätte sein können; alles danach wäre Overkill gewesen. ****1/4"
[8.0] "Auf ähnlich hohem Niveau wie das NWO'06-Match, wenn auch nicht ganz so gut. Dennoch hatte das Match starke Phasen (z. B. Angle der im Triangle Choke fast bewusstlos wird) und das Finish mindert ein wenig den guten Gesamteindruck."
[8.0] "Ein bisschen overrated, auch wenn es ein sehr gutes Smackdown Match war! Vielleicht war es Brock Lesnar, der am Ende die höchste Punktzahl verhinderte, aber auch so wird das beste Match der Beiden immer das von No Way Out 2006 bleiben!"
