Source: Daily Southtown
Kurt Angle won an Olympic gold medal as an amateur wrestler in 1996 and parlayed that win into a successful career as a professional wrestler.
He won six championships with World Wrestling Entertainment, facing such wrestling legends as Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
In September, Angle joined the burgeoning Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. He will walk into the ring tonight at TNA’s “Slammiversary” pay-per-view event and expects to walk out as the new champ.
One of his first stops after the main event will be in Oak Lawn. Angle will be available for autographs as Pro Championship Wrestling hosts Dream Night 6, the local circuit’s biggest event of the year. Dream Night 6 begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Oak Lawn Pavilion, 9401 S. Oak Park Avenue. Tickets cost $10.
Before he suited up for his title bout, Angle talked with the Daily Southtown.
Q: Am I speaking with Kurt Angle the professional wrestler or the guy outside of the ring? How is your personality different from the wrestling persona?
A: I am just a normal, everyday person. I am a very intense individual, which is a lot like my character. The difference is I pretty much ham it up in interviews, and they often come off in an angry fashion. Since I started with TNA, I have been used in that way. That will change pretty quickly. Today, I am intense, but I am more about myself. Going in there and being the franchise of the company, going after the title and not caring about anything else. I feel that my character is going to change.
With the other company, WWE, I had many dimensions. I had a comical dimension or goofball dimension. I have always been an intense individual. I have been a “good” guy and “bad” guy many times. The bad guy not only cheats, but he also runs away when things get rough. I was good at both sides. Now at TNA, I am a good guy. I have enjoyed it, but I have not yet been able to show off many of my talents, which will come in the future.
Q: Do you prefer to be the good guy or bad guy?
A: To me it doesn’t matter. The bad guy gives me a lot more dimensions. I get to interfere in the corner a lot more. I kind of end up being the guy who says one thing and then ends up with pie on his face in the end. You get a lot of entertainment value with my bad guy persona.”
The good guy gives a lot of entertainment value as well. I look very much and perform very much like a mixed martial artist. A lot of people buy into that because, I won a gold medal at the Olympics and in the near future I am going to do some mixed martial arts. A lot of people when I come out they think, “This kid is tough,” or “This kid is the real deal.” It is much easier for me to be the good guy.
The bad guy is a great technician. It has been hard for me to stick with the bad guy character. A lot of times the bad guys are so entertaining and the fans enjoy it so much they don’t want to boo them anymore. You see a guy like Christian Cage (TNA Champion) is like that. He is entertaining at what he does. I am very much like Christian as a bad guy. I tend to be very entertaining.
Q: What can fans expect when they see you compete in mixed martial arts?
A: I expect to do two or three fights. Not a long career. I am 38 now. I have had five neck injuries. I have had an injury to just about every part of my body — my knees, my back, broken bones, my front teeth knocked out, broke my nose twice.
Pro wrestling, they call it entertainment, but it is a lot more brutal than people think. They tend to forget when we do bump (fall) on the ground; we are bumping on plywood. It is like getting hit in the back with a board. When you run against the ropes, the boards are bouncing, so it is really bad for your knees.”
Let’s put it this way, the company I am talking to said, “Why do you want to keep wrestling? It is more brutal on your body than MMA.”
Q: Is that company the Ultimate Fighting Championship?
A: I’m going to go with whatever company treats me the best. Gives me the best deal. And, what I think is the most professional. I’ll give you an example; I have all the respect in the world for (UFC President) Dana White. But when he runs his show on Spike TV, he uses the F-word every other word. To me, that is not professional.
A 12-year-old kid is watching mixed martial arts, because he loves it and Dana White, president of the company, is using the F-word. That tends to lessen my vote toward UFC. Then because Dana swears, the fighters swear. Dana is always saying, “We don’t want to look like thugs. We want to look like professional athletes. So, you guys need to carry yourself that way.” It starts at the mouth.”
Dana is a great owner. He has done tremendous things. I have a lot of respect for him, but like father like son. If he is going to talk that way, the fighters are going to talk that way. And you are going to have that kind of language. It is really not acceptable. I am sure Spike TV gets nervous every week when they get the tape from UFC, and they have to bleep out all of the swear words.
Q: Did those same morals factor into your decision to leave WWE and sign with TNA in September?
A: WWE was just too much to handle. I was probably one of the top two guys there. It was a lot of time spent away from my family – 300 days on the road. They worked me into the ground. When I asked for time of due to injury or personal issues, I wasn’t given time off. I had to work around it.
At one point I was in trouble and my wife really helped me out of it. I had a pain killer addiction. That was about three years ago. She kept telling me, “You are addicted to pills. You are a junkie. You have got to stop.” I would ignore her. When the time came that I finally listened to my wife, the WWE then called me too and said, “Hey, there is a problem. We need to fix this.”
I went to a doctor. He said, “Listen, we need to check you into rehab. You need to stay off pills for three months. You are going to go through withdrawal. We are going to get you prepared to go back out on the road. Make sure your mind and body are strong so you are not thinking about taking these pills anymore.”
I expressed that to the president of WWE, he was basically was like, “Too bad. You are staying on the road. You can do this on your own. You are an Olympic gold medalist. You are invincible. You can deal with it. Do it.” It was more like a tough love, but I think it was more about if they take Angle off the road, they lose money.
It really hurt. Right after that, my wife went south on the WWE. She just said, “That is not where you need to be.” Her and I fought over it for a couple years, but she ended up being right when she said, “You need to quit.” And, that is what I did.
I signed with TNA immediately after that. I told them, this is what happened and I don’t want to be in that situation again. As long as you guys treat me the right way, I would love to be a part of the company.
Q: How has it been going thus far?
A: It has gone tremendously well. The only drawback that we have right now is we only get one hour on TV per week. WWE has five or six hours. They get the opportunity to cross promote. For example, we are on against (the WWE’s) Extreme Championship Wrestling or ECW. They get to advertise for (WWE’s) Raw and Smackdown programs during ECW. They are using all three shows to cross promote. We don’t have another show to cross promote.
What we need is another hour, and we are supposedly getting that by the end of the summer. Once we get that, we will be able to go head to head with WWE. Our shows will be a heck of a lot better.
It is really hard to have eight matches with a pay-per-view coming up and tell a story in one hour. Actually, it is not even an hour. It is 42 minutes with the commercials. So, we have 42 minutes a week to promote eight different stories — eight different angles. That is almost impossible.
Now in two hours, we could easily do it, and we wouldn’t even have to write any more than what we are doing now. We could just kind of give guys more time to talk, more time to wrestle. We are actually a wrestling company. Our logo is: Less Talk, More Action.
You are going to see a lot more wrestling, which the fans like. We have got these young fans that are pro wrestling fans and mixed martial arts fans. When they watch mixed martial arts, they are also getting less talk and more action. Our company is more geared toward the MMA style than WWE.
WWE is more talk, less action. It is more of an entertainment thing. Some guys will give 15-, 17-, 18-, 19-minute promos. You can hit that promo in four minutes and get your point across and have another 14 minutes to do something else.
That is the problem with WWE is they extend themselves too much on some of their programs or storylines. If we get two hours, we are not going to cram 10 pounds in a five-pound bag. We are going to put 10 pounds in a ten-pound bag and it is going to fit perfectly.
Q: You have fought some of the biggest names in the business including Stone Cold Steve Austin, Samoa Joe and the Rock. Who are some of your favorite opponents?
A: You have named three of the top ten. I have made Hulk Hogan tap out (referring to his signature submission maneuver, the Ankle Lock). I have made The Rock tap out. I have made Stone Cold Steve Austin tap out. I have made Samoa Joe tap out. I have made Chris Benoit tap out. I have even made Undertaker tap out.”
Me being 5 feet, 10 inches, 225 pounds. I am not the ideal prototype wrestler that the WWE is looking for. They want 6 feet, 5 inches, 270 pounds. Most of them can’t wrestle.
They are built though. They can’t cut good promos either. They just look good. Vince (McMahon, owner of the WWE) loves that. I think I kind of broke the mold along with Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit. We broke that mold, then they brought it back.
With TNA, what you get is not just the big guys. We have got guys of all shapes and sizes. The smaller guys end up being some of the best wrestlers. For those guys, we have the X Division, which I feel is almost as important as our Heavyweight Division. In WWE, they have the Heavyweight Division and a Cruiserweight Division that doesn’t mean crap. When you look at our show, you think, “What show needs more time?” Our show needs more time, because we have a lot better talent. Our wrestlers can wrestle.
When I was with the WWE, I would watch TNA and I would think, ‘Gosh, I wish I could wrestle that guy, and that guy, and that guy.’ Before I knew it, there were 30 guys in TNA I wanted to wrestle.
I was just treading water in WWE, wrestling the same guys over and over. Wrestling Rey Mysterio over and over. Eddie Guerrero over and over. Christ Benoit over and over. Before I knew it they put me with Mark Henry, and I wrestled him over and over. It just never stopped.
My ability to work with new talent was gone. I had wrestled everybody. It got to the point where I really didn’t even want to wrestle Shawn Michaels. We ended up having seven matches — five of them on TV. We supposedly had the match of the century at Wrestlemania 21 in 2005.
I thought if it was the greatest match ever supposedly, lets just leave it at that. Instead, we are on TV doing another match again. Then we are scheduled on the next pay-per-view. Then we are on TV doing another 35-minute match. It was like beating a dead horse.
I understand with wrestling angles, you may want to go for six months. But the thing is you don’t want to put those guys in the ring every week, or people won’t want to pay to see them on the pay-per-view. At TNA, what we are doing is we are wrestling toward a pay-per-view.
But if I am set to go up against Samoa Joe, I am not going to wrestle Samoa Joe week after week. I might wrestle A.J. Styles and Christian Cage to prepare myself and have a great match on TV that means something. But I am not wrestling Samoa Joe until the pay-per-view.
I have had a lot of success in professional wrestling. At the WWE, I was the most reliable guy. At TNA, it is the same thing. They rely on me to bring in ratings. They rely on me to have the best match on the card at every show. There is a little bit of pressure to be the best.
Q: How long do you think you can handle that pressure?
A: The way I feel — even though wrestling is brutal — I will probably go another 10 years. I can do it. It is just a matter of me being smart.
I do a lot of dangerous stuff. I just need to do it at the right times like at the pay-per-views and the shows that mean a lot. I can have a match in the middle of the ring and not throw one punch, not hit the ropes and wrestle 30 minutes. I can actually have a five-star match like that.
Not a lot of wrestlers can do that. They are spot wrestlers. They like to get on the ropes and do this or that. My philosophy is keep it in the middle. Keep it a wrestling match, and make it look real.
I have a reputation being fairly stiff. If I am wrestling someone, I lay it in. The other guys who are wrestling me can definitely feel it. And, I expect the same in return. I don’t do anything I wouldn’t allow my opponents to do to me.
Q: What are your thoughts of Chicago?
A: Chicago is one of the best wrestling towns in America. The passion that people have for it … Any time we ever went out there we sold out the Allstate Arena. The fans there are loyal, and God willing with TNA we are going to get to Chicago. It is just going to take a bit of time.
Our company is only five years old and look at how far they have come already. We are in 190 different countries. We just got a TV deal in England. Our ratings are almost equal to WWE in Europe. We are expecting the same in the United States.”
In Mexico, our ratings are really good. The WWE has a lot of Hispanic fans, but they like to see us wrestling. They grew up watching Lucha Libre, and they expect to see a lot of action in these matches and that is what they are going to get in TNA.
If you go …
What: Pro Championship Wrestling’s Dream Night 6, featuring an appearance by Kurt Angle
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Oak Lawn Pavilion, 9401 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak Lawn
Tickets: $10
Information: Call (708) 945-4386 or visit www.pcwwrestling.net
