Inside The Ropes published a video of one of their shows with Kurt Angle where the WWE Hall Of Famer recalled a time when he made Vince McMahon laugh backstage with Steve Austin that it frustrated the former WWE boss to the point where he fined Angle for making him laugh.
“We were doing the pre-tapes and Vince would say, ‘listen, I know this is kinda crazy, and everyone’s gonna be laughing, but please, do not laugh until the pre-tape’s over.’ So we would do these pre-tapes and he [Vince] is like, ‘we don’t have all night to do this because we have to get this to the truck before the show starts’. So the pre-tapes happen before the show. So everything you see backstage during the show happens earlier in the day.
So Vince wanted to get them out of the way, not do them live during the show. So Steve and I were doing these comedy skits, and they were so f***ing funny. And after three pre-tapes, I kept laughing. And Vince is like, ‘OK, OK, the next person that f***in laughs, you’re getting fined $2,000.’
I said, ‘well does that count if I do it multiple times?’ he said yes. ‘Every time you laugh, it’s $2,000.’ Well I ended up that night, I spent $14,000. Vince fined me 14 grand, Holy s**t.”