#8 Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle (SmackDown - September 18, 2003)
Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar became bitter rivals in 2003 after Lesnar won the Royal Rumble match and started chasing Angle for his WWE Championship. Brock did successfully take the belt at WrestleMania, but something changed.
After such a gruelling match and a gutsy performance by Lesnar in the main event of WM 19, the two men began to grow a mutual respect for each other.
By the summer they were a pair of ultra-competitive pals. Both men were good guys, but their nature forced upon them, the overwhelming need to find out once and for all who the better man was. Angle was coming off a very recent and unproven neck surgery at WrestleMania that year. Now, both men were healthy.
How do two men like them settle a score? Why, an Ironman match, of course.
An episode of SmackDown in September hosted the historic contest, which saw Angle fall short, 5 falls to 4.