Rey Mysterio v Kurt Angle (Summerslam, 8/25/02)
I have perhaps mentioned before that this is a great pairing. I think this was the first one-on-one iteration of it as well and they got off to a heck of a start. Angle is hyperactive and wants to throw Rey around and Rey is obviously great at being thrown around, jumping into those throws in interesting ways, having his stuff reversed so he can then be thrown. He's a great Angle opponent because he'll let Angle lean into his maniac go-go-go style without letting him totally run away with it. We've seen things like the armdrag reversal to the Angle Slam plenty of times over the years, but it felt fresh here and the crowd responded like it was a big moment. Angle's also a really strong base so all of Rey's flying looks great. Ultimately it's Tom v Jerry, but in this version Tom catches Jerry and breaks his ankle.
Rey Mysterio v Randy Orton (No Way Out, 2/19/06)
Randy Orton is such a strange animal. His highs are fairly high and his lows are bottom of the barrel and there's this big chasm of whateverness in the middle. I remember this being a weird time for Orton, one where he'd pretty recently bombed as the world champ and then been surpassed as the future star of Evolution by a guy even older than the current star. They obviously still saw him as an important piece of WWE going forward (I mean we're 17 years down the line and he's still a main event player), but it also felt like he was sort of in limbo here, not quite next man up, not totally in the doghouse. Either way this was an excellent match with an excellent Orton performance, the kind of thing he's always had in him even if he's never actually showed it as often as you'd like. At a bare minimum he's motivated here and his smugness is off the charts, just the most hateable scumbag walking. Even though the whole thing with using Eddie's death to get heat is hackneyed he at least took it and ran with it. He tries to get under Rey's skin by condescendingly backing up on a rope break like "oh I nearly lost you there you're so little," then slaps him across the head on the next one and is extremely pleased with himself. It was college jock picking on someone half his size and there were also moments where he'd waste Rey with huge uppercuts from his knees, the faux cruelty turning into actual cruelty. Rey's strikes have some extra mustard behind them in response and structurally the match is about what you expect. Orton mostly works from above without being definitively in control, Rey sprinkles in hope spots, then he builds up some momentum and Orton kills him for real. The blocked apron hurricanrana leading to him whipping Rey into the post like the latter was a baseball bat was awesome and the arm stuff after that was all really good. He would just grab Rey's arm and wrap it around the rope and twist it in really nasty ways. Cole was maybe a weeeee bit grating on commentary trying to force home how DESPICABLE Orton is and at a couple points he could've toned it down a touch, but the way he almost went silent in disgust after Orton grabbed the ropes to win was great.
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