Unfortunately for ECW, Kurt Angle was determined to put a stop to any more defections from the SmackDown roster. So far, he was succeeding.
Spike Dudley and Rob Van Dam were still injured after Kurt's attack last week. This week, Nunzio was Angle's victim. The Olympic champion wasted no time taking down his opponent. After a mere two minutes of action, the former Little Guido was forced to tap out to an ankle lock. He continued to scream in agony as Angle refused to break the hold, resulting in the brutal tearing of one of Nunzio's ligaments. Surely he would be unable to wrestle for any promotion now, let alone ECW. That was the method to Kurt Angle's madness. As SmackDown continued, Angle demonstrated just how mad he was.
Kurt attacked Rey Mysterio in the parking lot, injuring the masked man's neck by suplexing him on the concrete floor. Eddie Guerrero got run down by his own low rider after finishing a match with Billy Kidman. Not surprisingly, Angle was behind the wheel. Once Kurt went after Al Snow during an in ring promo however, enough was enough. One man had seen too much damage inflicted tonight.
That man was Tazz.
"Hey Angle!" Tazz called from the broadcast table. "I'm getting pretty sick and tired of watching you take out people. You wanna hurt guys that sweat and bleed extreme? You wanna screw around with guys that came from ECW? Huh brother? Well why don't you try screwing around with me, bitch!"
Before Angle could even respond, Tazz was standing inside the ring. It was a place he wasn't supposed to be anymore. Like Angle, Tazz had suffered a neck injury. Unlike Angle, he wasn't able to come back from it. By orders of his doctors, Tazz hadn't wrestled in years. Michael Cole reminded the home viewers of all this as the two men stared one another down. Kurt wasn't about to back down from the fight. Neither was the man once called the human wrecking machine. The two men started trading punches as Cole expressed a concern for his broadcast partner.
Tazz was supposed to be retired. He was supposed to stop being extreme and start being an announcer. At this point in his life, Tazz was supposed to lose a fight to a man like Kurt Angle.
Unfortunately for Kurt Angle, Tazz never did what he was supposed to. The orange and black attack ducked a right hand and caught Angle in an overhead Tazzplex. He nailed the former WWE champ in the face with a hard clothesline. As SmackDown went off the air, Tazz was the one inflicting damage. As Angle passed out from the Tazzmission chokehold, he heard his newest adversary screaming something into his ear. The words would haunt Angle's memory from this day on.
"BEAT ME IF YOU CAN! SURVIVE, IF I LET YOU!"