Shelton Benjamin has done a lot during his 20+ years in the pro wrestling business.
The AEW star and member of The Hurt Syndicate considers his days as part of Team Angle alongside Kurt Angle and Charlie Haas as the best of his career.
In late 2002, Benjamin and Haas were immediately placed in a main event storyline as they debuted on WWE SmackDown and aligned with Angle to form the Team Angle faction.
Having fond memories of his early days on SmackDown, Shelton Benjamin stated it was the most exciting era of his pro wrestling career while reflecting on the period of time during an interview with Kenny McIntosh (@KennyMcITR) of Inside The Ropes.
“The main event story. It was the best position to be in aside from the position they put Brock [Lesnar] in,” Benjamin recalled. “Team Angle, to me, was the most fun time of my career. I was working with Charlie Haas, and me and him were becoming best friends. I was working with Kurt Angle, who I looked up to both as an amateur wrestler and a pro wrestler. He was a World Champion, NCAA Champion.”
Benjamin continued, “I mean, he accomplished everything I wanted to do. We were working in the main event story and we were tag champions. That’s how I started, getting to see the world. It was the most exciting time of my career. If I could go back to any era it probably would be then, because I can’t think of a time when I was happier.”
Later in the interview, Benjamin, who currently works as one-half of the AEW World Tag-Team Champions alongside fellow Hurt Syndicate member Bobby Lashley, described what it was like to work with the Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle during that time in their respective careers.
“Honestly, it was like travelling with your older brother who was, I’m not going to say immature, but it was like three brothers travelling together,” he said. “We were all having fun, being goofy. It was so easy. Despite his position, it wasn’t a situation where you felt like you were under Kurt. Kurt made you feel like a brother. He made you feel welcome. He made you feel like we were family. So it was so easy. One of the coolest things was that he was teaching us stuff and we were teaching him things.”
