Fans and WWE employees alike are bemoaning the recent injury to Kurt Angle, the best overall performer in the business today and a key part of the company’s plans for at least the next few years. Like Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Rhyno, and, most recently, Edge, before him, Angle reportedly has a neck injury requiring surgery that will keep him on the shelf for about a year.

While the current plan is for him to still work his WrestleMania main event against Brock Lesnar, Angle probably won’t return after that March PPV bout until at least the 2004 Royal Rumble. Angle’s absence certainly hurts Vince and Co. short term, what with the Rock’s spotty schedule and a roster of talent long on ability but not so much on natural charisma. However, there’s one positive to today’s more-brutal-than-ever working style and the casualties that come with it: It keeps certainly things fresh in a climate that feeds us the same performers -- granted, in several reincarnations (Big Evil anyone?) -- in a business that has traditionally thrived on new faces and innovative twists.

In the same fashion that made him an Olympic champion (don’t laugh), Angle is going to suck it up, postpone neck surgery for a few weeks and (my guess) probably go on to have one of the best bouts on March 30. Granted, Angle won’t be around for post-Mania rematches with Lesnar that could draw money when the company really needs it. And if they take him off TV (and they most definitely should), the team of Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin will suffer a bit without their mouthpiece.

But just think of how hot that same rematch will be at the 2004 WrestleMania, with a once-again-heel Lesnar (given the fickle nature of WWE creative) defending the championship against Angle, who by then might just be ready for that babyface push that everyone thought was the right move back in 2001. (Not that I blame them for that one -- Angle’s post-Sept. 11 win for the then-Federation title seemed like a hot idea at the time.)

Not that Angle has to return as a babyface. When Ric Flair broke his back in three places in a plane crash in October 1975, he was just hitting his stride in Crockett country, upsetting Wahoo McDaniel for the Mid-Atlantic title weeks earlier in Hampton, Va. Although Flair was amazingly back in the ring by late February 1976, he had already returned to Mid-Atlantic television weeks earlier as a manager for Angelo Mosca, one of the heels brought in to pick up the slack after the plane crash, which not only sidelined the Nature Boy but also ended the career of longtime legendary heel Johnny Valentine.

Despite the fact that Flair’s injury was not played up at all on TV, as they didn’t want sympathy for the cocky heel, the young star received tons of get-well cards anyway. In one of his first televised promos upon returning, Flair said he wanted to show the fans who had sent cards how much they meant to him. He then proceeded to maniacally tear up many of the cards before dumping the sack on the floor. As soon as he was able, Flair resumed his feud with McDaniel, with the two trading the Mid-Atlantic title several times in 1976.

In Angle’s case, a slowly developed babyface turn over the next few months makes sense. To keep the heat on Haas and Shelton, the tandem should eventually dump Angle and perhaps name Kurt’s brother, Eric, as the new leader of the group, keeping the Team Angle moniker intact.

Coupled with the return of Edge, who’s also sitting out this year’s Mania and the next 12 months because of a similar injury, Angle’s comeback for revenge next year will more than offset the injuries that will no doubt have again sidelined Steve Austin or retired Hulk Hogan once and for all. (With the latter, we can certainly dream, can’t we?)

Injuries -- shoot and worked -- have often resulted in big box office. Almost funny to think that back in the ’70s and ’80s, bookers would develop angles involving a wrestler becoming “injured,” enabling one of the boys to work another territory or travel abroad to work Japan. Given today’s style, which results in so many legit injuries, the WWE writing teams would never book such a scenario -- even for the stalest character on the roster. (Think Triple H is overstaying his welcome now? Consider if he hadn’t been out for months because of his quad injury. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. And imagine how hot Kevin Nash will be when he returns. On second thought … bad example.)

Even during the much-ballyhooed “wrestling wars” in the ’90s between WCW and the former WWF, none of the jumps (e.g., Bret Hart leaving Vince’s RAW for Ted’s Nitro) had much of an effect because, well, the Hitman had never really gone away -- he merely showed up weeks later on a different program. In the days before cable TV, the boys could switch territories every six months to a year and be a new star with every new ZIP code.

In the old-school era, not only did worked (Flair’s brief 1983 retirement due to “injuries” sustained at the hands of Harley Race’s bounty hunters Bob Orton Jr. and Dick Slater) and shoot (Jerry Lawler’s broken leg at the three-count-making hand of ref Jerry Calhoun in a touch-football game in January 1980) injuries alike provide great drama, but they also provided a chain-wrapped punch (obvious Memphis reference) in the arm to that particular wrestler’s career. (Run-on sentences? The HELL you say.)

At the time, promoter Jerry Jarrett (now owner of NWA: TNA) was furious about the injury to Lawler, the promotion’s top heel who was in his prime as CWA World champion and AWA Southern titleholder. No wonder -- he had warned his star, who played quarterback, about the physical nature and potential danger of those Sunday afternoon games, which were more like “extreme touch” football, with tackles a staple of the contests.

Little did Jarrett realize what a lucky break it was. The injury produced one of the most important lines ever uttered in the history of professional wrestling when Lawler’s manager Jimmy Hart (who up until that point wasn’t allowed to talk much during interviews with the monarch of the Memphis mat) came out and rhetorically asked announcer Lance Russell: “If you have a prized racehorse, a champion, and he breaks his leg, what do you do to him?” (The line was so personal that even Lawler admitted in his recent book that Hart’s line -- fed to him by Jarrett -- bothered him. Hart to this day believes that Lawler broke his jaw intentionally with a potato in Indiana because of the comment.)

The casual observer familiar with the big names who did a job for Lawler over the years prior to January 1981 -- when the King returned after sitting out a year because of that broken left leg -- might be perplexed to find that that journeyman-pro The Dream Machine (the late Troy Graham) was booked for the Memphis native’s return bout around the loop. At first, they were building up a heel Tommy Rich to be the opponent, but Lawler’s delayed return nixed that. But it didn’t matter -- Lawler could have worked against a broom upon his return, especially with the King guaranteed five minutes with Hart afterward should he defeat the Dream.

More than 11,500 packed the Mid-South Coliseum that January night (including 10-year-old Scott Bowden), with many fans sitting on the aisle steps. Lawler won after pulling a chain from his boot (following the prerequisite ref bump by Calhoun) and knocking Graham to dreamland with his trademark fist-drop from the second turnbuckle. (I believe Angle used a fist-drop to clinch his Olympic gold medal.)

While you never like to see any of the boys get hurt, Angle’s injury is a minor setback short-term and a benefit long-term. And with a company that has trouble nowadays planning down the road (once one of Vince’s strengths), injuries are just about the only thing that brings out the best of the current creative staff. Angle’s injury leaves a Hulk-sized void but presents an even bigger opportunity to create new stars and build for the future. Oh, yeah. It’s true. It’s true.

(Special thanks to Mid-Atlantic Wrestling historian Dick Bourne and the guys at kayfabememories.com for keeping me straight on the Flair stuff. Check out Bourne’s Web site at http://www.midatlanticwrestling.net/.)

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