On the latest edition of the Kurt Angle Show WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle spoke about a number of different topics, including how his comedy bits used to get over big with fans and how Shawn Michaels told him he’d fight for real during the build-up to their WrestleMania 21 classic. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
When he would perform a skit that got over huge with fans:
It’s like hitting a grand slamming, it’s like winning the Super Bowl, it’s like winning an Olympic gold medal. When you nail it, and you know you did, you can’t be happier. I enjoyed doing that more than wrestling and you know how much I love getting in the ring and wrestling. Being entertaining was the most important thing to me and I got away from it for a while and got into the more intense, wrestling machine Kurt Angle and that’s because Vince McMahon wanted me to start portraying myself as more serious. I loved making an ass out of myself and throwing myself out there, that’s the biggest test to show your confidence. If you can go out there and perform and do stuff you’re not doing, and you can do it pretty well, that’s a sign of somebody who has talent.
Says Vince McMahon wanted to push him to the moon once he found out how talented Angle was:
Vince McMahon, when I started he didn’t know the talent that I had. He thought I was just going to be a technical wrestler but when I proved myself that I could be entertaining, that’s when the lightning bolt went off in his head and he said I have someone special right here, I’m going to continue to use him and push him very hard. Me showing I was just as good an entertainer as I was a technical wrestler gave Vince the confidence to start utilizing me on more entertaining segments. It was a huge compliment from Vince but he did the right thing. I was pretty good at it, it was a lot of fun and I had fun doing it.
Says he only ever worked stiff in the build-up to WrestleMania 21 to sell his feud with Shawn Michaels:
I did when I did the Kurt Angle invitationals. Vince McMahon wanted me to be really stiff, he wanted me to lay in. I laid into these guys, it was a bully technique and Vince wanted me to bully everybody during the invitational and I did that. That’s the only time I ever laid into talent.
Reveals Shawn Michaels told him he would fight him for real if he had to:
I was in shock. The last time I really spoke to Shawn before that was Survivor Series where I told him ‘Hey, you’re pretty good.’ I didn’t know Shawn, he was out when I started with injury and he didn’t come back till a couple years after. The next time I see him he knows he’s wrestling me and decides to come up and I guess he just wanted to tell me he’s not afraid of me. He said ‘Listen, I’m not scared of you. If it goes down, it goes down. I’m not afraid to fight you.’ I was like okay, I don’t know why you’re saying this but alright I respect that. I guess because I was a shooter and I had a little bit of a reputation of being stiff in the ring so I think that might have added to it. I respected that, I was shocked because I’ve been professional up until then, I was in the company for 5 years and never did anybody wrong and not sure why he said it. It was the shock factor, it was really crazy that he said this to me, it blew my mind.
(H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)