Fye-nal Analysis: Interviewing Kurt Angle

Well it hasn’t been a great start to the day. I’m on my way to meet and interview Kurt Angle…finally. It’s 7.50am and I have been on the train for approximately three minutes. That would be fine but the train was supposed to depart at 7.10am. I’ve been told we’re still expected to arrive in London on time but I might be more inclined to believe that if we hadn’t stopped already while I typed this.
I’ve just ordered a bacon butty, or bacon sandwich for those of you not familiar with the dialect of the north east of England; my spell check apparently isn’t. The service is remarkably quick as it’s just arrived as I typed about it. £4.50 for a bacon sandwich! £4.50! I can’t believe it, it’s two rashers of bacon in a reasonable sized bun. I’m absolutely astounded. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was speechless and the fact that I’m trying to save my voice for the interview because I’ve had laryngitis for over a month, then I might have told the guy where to shove his bacon sandwich. £4.50! I can’t believe it, what the folk!?
Going to back to my laryngitis comment, it’s a genuine concern of mine that this interview may deteriorate into a farce. I can barely get a sentence out without my voice cracking into a whisper. That wouldn’t be too bad if it was just a written interview but the plan is to film the interview or, at the very least, record it on audio. Again there are ways around that, after all the people listening to or viewing the interview want to see and hear Kurt Angle, not Paul Fahey. My main concern however, is that a man deaf in one ear, as Kurt is, may not be able to hear me clearly enough to answer the questions.
This day is not improving. I’ve just had to re-type the above as my laptop decided to exit the program before I’d saved anything. I’m saving this article after each paragraph this time around.
I must move onto the subject matter – Kurt Angle. The Olympic gold medallist, the WWE grand slam champion, the TNA Triple Crown winner and current TNA World Champion. I have been lucky enough to have been a wrestling fan long enough to have seen Kurt’s debut at Survivor Series 1999, meaning I have been able to follow his entire pro wrestling career. Meeting Kurt will be an absolute honour. When I was asked a year ago to name my top three choices of wrestling personalities to interview I quickly named Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley and Kurt Angle. After conducting an interview with Mrs Foley’s baby boy last April and today’s interview with Kurt, I’ll have completed two out of three. Don’t get me wrong I don’t expect to ever get the chance to interview Shawn Michaels but I would have said that about Foley and Angle this time last year.
I’m going to try to throw down my memories of Kurt Angle in this article. My initial memories of him are as a smug amateur wrestler bragging about his ability and his three I’s in vignettes leading up to Survivor Series 1999. Now the then-WWF in 1999 wasn’t exactly like the modern day UFC. It didn’t throw an ex champion at the debuting Angle like UFC tested Brock Lesnar with Frank Mir. Quite the contrary, Kurt was signed to face the man formerly known as ‘Meat’. Granted he was the son of a legend but Shawn Stasiak never really achieved much in the wrestling business, especially under Vince’s umbrella.
Kurt began a winning streak that would stretch two months but it wasn’t until I witnessed the Olympian’s protests at being choked out by a debuting Tazz at Royal Rumble 2000 that I realised this guy was comedy gold. Fast forward two months to WrestleMania 2000 and I realised that Kurt Angle, now holding the European and InterContinental, sorry scratch that, the EuroContinental Championships, was wrestling gold too. His triple threat match with fellow technicians Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit was a joy to behold and Kurt’s post-match moaning that he lost both titles without losing a fall were warranted but hilarious. His interactions with Bob Backlund in the build up to Mania, equally so.
Kurt was having a debut year like no other. By the time June had been and gone Kurt had been crowned King of the Ring and was being pushed into a feud with top dog Triple H. Hunter had stepped up unbelievably in the previous 18 months and along with The Rock, he had been forced to carry the company in the absence of Undertaker, Steve Austin, Mick Foley and Shawn Michaels. Hunter and Rocky had done an admirable job and now he was going to help Kurt break into the main event spot…within nine months of the Olympian’s debut.
A love triangle between Stephanie McMahon, Triple H and Kurt was teased for a while and their rivalry was intense. Both men were technically heels in the feud which surely made everything harder to pull off but Kurt was fast developing into someone who could be a comedy genius with his dry, goofy sense of humour backstage but he maintained enough credibility that everyone took him seriously in the ring. Vince McMahon made the most appropriate comment about Kurt but that is still to come.
No Mercy 2000, in the midst of a strange and arguably stupid culmination to the ‘Who ran Austin over?’ angle, Kurt Angle pinned The Rock for the then-WWF Championship after interference by Rikishi on behalf of a reluctant Rocky backfired. Angle had won the big prize within 11 months of debuting in the WWE. Nobody in modern day wrestling had won the WWE title quicker. Kurt hadn’t jumped from WCW as a main event guaranteed draw. He wasn’t Ric Flair or Sting or Goldberg. In professional wrestling terms he was an untested nobody who had smashed the same glass ceiling that people like Val Venis, Billy Gunn, D’Lo Brown and many others had tried and failed to do over the last year or so.
Brock Lesnar would later go on to better Kurt’s rookie year but at the time, Angle’s rise to prominence in the wrestling industry was shocking but worthy. Any new wrestling fan starting to watch Raw or SmackDown in 2000 would never have guessed that Kurt was a rookie. He was holding his own in the ring with Hunter, Taker, The Rock and Austin and was keeping up in vignettes with the likes of Mick Foley, Hunter and Edge & Christian.
“Badges…we don’t need no stinking badges!”
His alliance with a newly turned heel Steve Austin and Vince McMahon in 2001, was comedy gold like I hadn’t seen in WWE since Mick Foley was at his comedy peak. The hats, the guitar, the goofiness of Kurt playing off the straight man combination of Austin and Vinny Mac was hilarious. I said earlier Vince made a comment about Kurt that described him to a tee. When Austin commented that Angle was a dork, Vince quickly responded “he’s a dangerous dork!” That’s how I remember Kurt best in his early years in the WWE – a dangerous dork. Dangerous in the ring, a dork backstage in vignettes. His interviews were usually intense, it was skits and vignettes where we saw Kurt’s funny side. The Olympic gold medallist was developing into the most versatile, all round performer on the roster.
Kurt showed in his feud with American Bad Ass era Undertaker that he could hang with the most experienced guy on the roster while still being able to create comedy magic outside the ring. His scooter parked next to Taker’s bike is a fond memory. His destruction of Taker’s bike another, although as a biker and motorcycle enthusiast who shares Taker’s taste for motorcycle’s (if not sharing his budget when buying them), I have to say that I was also a little distraught.
His first baby face turn came during the ill fated Invasion storyline when Austin betrayed the WWE and Angle stepped up as Vince’s boy in the fight against The Alliance. He had an amazing match with Shane McMahon at King of the Ring 2001 and went on to reconstruct Austin’s infamous beerbath assault on the McMahon’s when he dowsed The Alliance with milk either leading up to or just after Unforgiven 2001.
His baby face run didn’t last long as, despite being the WWE hero in the Survivor Series ’winner takes all’ match after a brief undercover double agent role in The Alliance, Kurt turned up on Raw the next night acting more familiarly like the Kurt Angle we had grown to love to hate.
The feud that springs to mind from 2002 is the ongoing battle with Edge, who I believe introduced the ‘You Suck’ chant to accompany Kurt’s theme music. Edge was also responsible for the shaving of Kurt’s hair after a ‘hair v hair’ match.
At the end of 2002, Kurt Angle was once again WWE Champion and had Paul Heyman and Team Angle behind him as he tried to duck and avoid contenders Brock Lesnar and Chris Benoit. His match with Benoit at the 2003 Royal Rumble was a clinic in technical wrestling and story telling and despite losing clean to the ankle lock, Chris Benoit received a standing ovation after the match. Kurt continued onto WrestleMania as champ and went down a shooting star pressing (well, almost) Brock Lesnar in another excellent encounter. It was soon after this that Kurt underwent neck surgery and returned to our screens as the General Manager of SmackDown; a role he reportedly despised.
At WrestleMania 20 Kurt challenged and went down to a wily Eddie Guerrero who avoided Kurt’s ankle lock by loosening his boot. Another classic match and surely Eddie Guerrero’s finest hour.
My favourite Angle rivalry has to be Chris Benoit. It raged on and off for six years and it was based on a simple philosophy and question – who was the best? My favourite one off feud of Kurt’s however has to be his WrestleMania 21 run with Shawn Michaels. Kurt and Shawn had been on separate brands since Shawn’s return from retirement and therefore had never faced each other but tension started between them at the 2005 Royal Rumble. In the lead up to Mania Kurt was complaining that his Olympic gold medal victory in Atlanta in 1996 was overshadowed by Shawn’s performances during that time as WWF Champion. Kurt intended to prove he could do anything Shawn had done and do it better than the Heart Break Kid. Kurt defeated Marty Janetty, days after we got to see a rare Rockers reunion, then Kurt won a ladder match, he hired Sensational Sherri as his manager and he hilariously sang his own theme music. The line “My name is Sexy Kurt, Sexy Kurt, I‘ll make your ankle hurt, ankle hurt!” still stands out for me as one of my favourite WWE comedy moments. Predictably the duo tore the house down at Mania 21.
Just over a year later, after being embroiled in a feud with Randy Orton, a more serious Kurt, now dubbed The Wrestling Machine, had shocked fans by jumping to ECW, in terms of storyline anyway. But it was his requested release and subsequent jump to TNA that really had fans gasping.
Total Nonstop Angle
Kurt added instant credibility to the TNA product, more so than any other member of their roster past or present. Granted guys like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe were big names but they had come from the indys, Sting was a legend but he was past his prime, Christian and the Dudleys were on the roster but they weren’t established main eveners like Kurt was. His move to TNA raised eyebrows in both companies and fans all around the world were shocked and intrigued in equal measure.
A feud with Samoa Joe was entertaining but many felt and still feel that the feud should have been held back for a really long build up similar to Hogan v Sting in 1996 / 1997. Kurt ended Joe’s 18 month undefeated streak and went into runs with Christian Cage, Sting and all the other top dogs in TNA. In 2007 he won the X Division, Tag Team and World Championships and is standing at the top of the roster as TNA World Champion heading into Sunday’s Against All Odds pay-per-view where he headlines with a title defence against Christian Cage.
It’s 9.25am now and I’ve been typing for the best part of 90 minutes so I’m going to give it a rest in a few moments. I was hoping this article would take me most of my journey to do but it appears that it’s only covered half of it. It’s took my mind off the nervous feelings I had earlier although I’m sure they’ll kick in later today prior to the interview. I think I’ve come up with some good, original questions but I guess Kurt and the people listening or watching will be the judge of that. I just hope my voice holds up or at the very least we somehow manage to pull off an interview some other way. Fingers crossed…
10.25am update…the train was scheduled to arrive in London for 10.32am giving me ample time to find my way across the city to the hotel to meet Kurt and his representatives. We were told that despite delays earlier we were still likely to arrive on time but we’re now being told that we will arrive in London at approximately 11am. Things are now going to be a bit of a push. Hopefully I’ll get there on time but I’m not so sure. Fingers and toes crossed…
It’s 5.50pm now and a long day has surrounded a fantastic half an hour or so with Kurt Angle. My voice held up thankfully and I got to the hotel with 20 minutes to spare. I was greeted in the lobby by LDN promoter Sanjay Bagga who had kindly agreed to film the interview. People knock Sanjay a lot and they’re entitled to their opinion but he’s always been OK with me and did us a very good turn today…although I’m sure he and Gary (my boss / webmaster who arranged the interview) have discussed a way to return the favour. I got to briefly meet my friends from The Squared Cirlce Radio show as they packed their stuff away from their interview with Kurt. It’s strange thinking of Lee (Tyers) and Andy (Evans) as friends for 18 months then meeting them but that’s how I think of them and I think they feel the same about me; at least I hope they do. Then it was onto the business of meeting Kurt.
We had a little bit of small talk while Sanjay and myself set up then it was onto business. Given the fact I had to omit almost a dozen pre-prepared questions, I could’ve talked to Kurt for a lot longer but we managed to get an excellent 24 minute interview on film. I’ve watched it back on the train before getting back into this article and at the risk of putting myself across as arrogant or conceited I think the interview is excellent. I don’t believe I’m trying to put myself across as anything other than professional to be honest because I believe a good interview is 70% the interviewee and 30% the right probing questions. To have Kurt say at the end that he really enjoyed it and thought it was a very good interview was a great compliment and one I will happily take on board. My voice sounds a little weird during the interview and broke and cracked in one or two places but everything is clear enough to at least make out the questions I asked. Kurt also surprised me with one or two of his answers.
He was very open about his painkiller addiction and his meeting with Vince McMahon when he asked for his release. He also discussed his goal in TNA to help create new stars or the stars of tomorrow. We didn’t get to talk about MMA unfortunately which was something I wanted to get into with Kurt – not literally of course, the guy would kill me inside of 20 seconds – but he did reveal that he was going to start training to compete in the 2004 Olympics then move into MMA. The reason Kurt didn’t pursue this was down to the neck injury that required surgery in 2003.
I was really pleased with how open and honest Kurt Angle was during the interview but what shocked me the most was how humble the guy was. He’s a legit tough guy with a proven track record of being one of the best workers in the industry and yet he had less of an ego than some of the UK wrestlers I know. He seemed like a great guy and I would love to catch up with him for a follow up in the future. Hopefully, I have done a good enough job with this interview that it will lead to other TNA interviews down the line. Who knows? Fingers, toes and arms crossed…
Send any comments or feedback to fye@wrestle-zone.co.uk