What if Ken Shamrock never left WWE?

#2 Kurt Angle Never Uses The Ankle Lock

Kurt Angle is widely heralded as not only one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, but a guy who was remarkable for his ability to pick up on the nuances of pro-wrestling and become great startlingly fast.

As WWE played up his real-life wrestling credentials, and particularly as the character became a bit less cartoonish, and a bit more serious, he adopted the Ankle Lock as a signature move.

The Ankle Lock was first popularized as a finishing move in WWE by Ken Shamrock, who’d famously snap en route to trying to break his opponent's ankles. Shamrock and Angle narrowly missed one another, as Angle started up on the main roster mere months after Shamrock headed out the door.

Had Shamrock hung around, it seems unlikely Angle would have started using the same hold. That’s even more assuredly true if Shamrock had moved back up the card, and thus started out in a much better established and more prominent role than the Olympic gold medalist.