On the most recent episode of his podcast, Kurt Angle delved into his relationship with Bobby Lashley, someone who shares quite a lot of traits with Angle – switching from amateur wrestling to professional wrestling, starting out in WWE, heading to TNA, before making their way back to the sports entertainment giant.
Another rather unfortunate experience the two men share is losing their amateur careers due to injuries. While Angle pulled through his injury, made it to the Olympics, and won a gold medal with a broken freakin’ neck, Lashley was injured during a bank robbery, as he dove for cover to avoid gunfire, resulting in a knee injury that required surgery, that ended his amateur career.
Recalling how he was able to get Lashley a chance with WWE, Angle shared,
“Oh, man. Bobby was a great worker and an incredible athlete. I’m the one that got him to try out for the WWE back in 2001, 2002. I went out to the Olympic Training Center and Bobby was there wrestling, right? I think he was number three on the Olympic team. And he stood out for his athleticism. I just knew he was going to be incredible, especially as a pro wrestler. So, I got him to try it with the WWE and he made it and here he is.”
“We talked a little bit, yeah. He told me he was interested and I told him it would be the right move. I said, ‘Come over, man.’ I did. And I’m happy. I actually beat him for the world title before I retired, and we had a really, really good match. I was really happy with that.”
Sharing that they had a close relationship during their time in TNA, Angle said,
“We were really close. You know, we didn’t call each other all the time, but you know, we were together. We were together. We were hanging out. We were, you know, talking about stuff and he was just one of my closest friends in TNA.”
(h/t 411mania)