Trivia / Kurt Angle

• Contractual Purity: When he was very new to the business, he was brought into (of all promotions) ECW for a night. That show featured a segment involving a pseudo-crucifixion involving barbed wire. Virtually ambiguous to the concept of Kayfabe, he warned Paul Heyman not to let him be associated with it or he'd be threatened with legal action - clearly worrying what appearing alongside such a thing would do to his wholesome American hero image. When it was released on home video, Angle's appearance was edited out, and wouldn't be re-added until much later.
• Creator Backlash:
  • He regrets returning so soon after his 2003 neck injury, saying he should have taken a whole year out to properly heal his neck.
  • He doesn't fully agree with WWE's Unpersoning of Chris Benoit, because he felt his best matches were against him, and it feels that he has to pretend they didn't happen.
  • He dislikes Gimmick Matches and hates doing them.
  • He looks back on the storyline he did of being obsessed with Sharmell with a lot of disdain, feeling that even as a heel persona it went too far. It doesn’t help that he’s since revealed that the whole angle and similar ones were a bizarre form of hazing on the part of Vince McMahon, who was weirdly fascinated with the revelation that Kurt had previously dated black women.
• Follow the Leader: Kurt Angle's success both inside and outside the company has been treated by WWE as a well that they could occasionally tap into for establishing the characters of guys with amateur wrestling backgrounds.
  • The World's Greatest Tag Team, Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas, were introduced to mainline WWE programming as his understudies, Team Angle, and given Angle's theme, and even after breaking off from him were given a heroic rock theme similar to his in all but melody actually titled "Heroes".
  • Jack Swagger's All-American wrestling background was used to create his nicknames, "The All-American American" and "The Real American", centered around a character with varying degrees of relative emphasis on his Patriotic Fervor and arrogant wrestling pride. He also started using the Ankle Lock as his main submission finisher.
  • WWE NXT's American Alpha tag team of Chad Gable and Jason Jordan is an outright love letter to Kurt Angle, as both guys contain elements of Angle himself as well as Haas and Benjamin respectively. Gable represents the younger Angle from the Attitude Era—the dorky arrogant guy who's also somehow endearing or funny and yet still dangerous because he can out-grapple anyone at will—along with Haas, being the more technically skilled white guy of the team. Jordan represents the matured Angle of the Ruthless Aggression Era—the intense badass wrestling machine who's come to own just how good he is and is capable of going on nigh-unstoppable tears—along with Benjamin, being the more pure athletic black guy of the team. This one took special notice not only from fans, but from Angle himself, as Kurt has said in an interview during his TNA farewell tour that he'd like to return to WWE as a part-time wrestler but regular character, serving as a mentor to Jordan and Gable with the intent of elevating them.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: His favourite match of his career is one he had with the Undertaker at No Way Out 2006 and he acknowledges that it rarely gets recognised, because it wasn't on a big show.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • He suffered a legit neck injury during the 1996 Olympics. His opponents would exploit that in matches. He would exploit it in promos.
    Angle: I won a gold medal with a broken freakin' neck!
  • He and Stone Cold were both injured at the same PPV and unable to wrestle for a couple of months. So they improvised all the funny skits as a way of keeping them on TV.
  • Kurt’s near-memetic inability to connect a moonsault on an opponent is due to one of his earliest attempts breaking Bob Holly’s arm. The incident upset Kurt so much that he insisted from that point forward that opponents would always move out the way when he tried the move and he just take the bump himself on the mat. Later in his career, he would actually be comfortable actually hitting a moonsault on an opponent like his moonsault off the cage against Ken Anderson in TNA.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Him losing the hair vs hair match in 2002 and getting his head shaved was largely because Kurt was going bald anyway.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: He was released from WWE in 2006 (allegedly) due to his refusal to go into drug rehab.
• Romance on the Set:
  • Dawn Marie herself confirmed that they were having an affair while Kurt was still married to Karen. There were rumours that he was the father of her child, but those have long since been disproven.
  • He also briefly dated former TNA Knockout Rhaka Khan.
• Recycled Soundtrack: His WWE theme had originally been used two years earlier by the Patriot. It's very odd to listen to as it features bells and tambourines, and it sounds like a Christmas version of the Kurt Angle theme.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Koko B. Ware attempted to recruit Angle for the WWF back in 1987.
  • Before he signed with WWE, he was given an offer to join ECW. He was invited by Paul Heyman to check out one show... which happened to be where the infamous Raven vs Sandman "crucification" match took place. Rumor has it that Kurt was so disgusted he turned it down and demanded his image not to be included in any footage of that show, though other sources claim this isn't true, just that he wasn't into the style of the fed.
  • In 2003 he hurt his neck at the No Way Out PPV and was going to drop the title before WrestleMania XIX in a thirty-second match on SmackDown. Brock Lesnar would then have faced Chris Benoit instead. Kurt had a change of mind after hearing how excited people were for the match, and opted to wrestle anyway - something he affirms would not happen in WWE today. He was also supposed to retain the title before his injury.
  • The Undertaker apparently suggested them having a match at WrestleMania 22 and Kurt being the one to end the streak. Vince apparently shot the idea down straight away. They did get to have a match at No Way Out however.
  • There were some talks about a proper "rematch" with Daniel Puder in Ultimate Fighting Championship, but nothing came out of it.
  • Kurt returned to WWE in April 2017 for his induction into the Hall of Fame and later, General Manager of Raw. Jack Swagger, the man with gimmick and wrestling style most similar to Angle (at least before American Alpha came along) asked for (and got) his contractual release less than a month before that, preventing the two from ever locking up in a WWE ring (for now). Sadly, with Kurt's retirement at Wrestlemania 35, this is a permanent missed opportunity.
  • The Jason Jordan storyline was intended to build to a match between the two at Wrestlemania 34, but Jason went down with a potentially career ending neck injury in December, and Kurt retired for good while he was still out.
  • In the build up to Kurt's retirement match at WrestleMania 35, Kurt actually did go to Vince and ask for his final opponent to be John Cena, who'd made his WWE debut against Kurt in 2002. In a bizarre case of Vince suddenly caring about continuity and sticking to an ongoing story for once, Vince insisted that, after the year of buildup they'd put into it, Kurt would face Baron Corbin at WrestleMania regardless of whether it was his retirement match or not and Kurt, knowing a losing battle when he saw it, agreed to do it.^note Some reports theorized that the reason Vince was so steadfast on Kurt wrestling the opponent he had chosen for him was because Vince was so disgusted by Ric Flair breaking his virtually-perfect send-off when he retired at WrestleMania XXIV to wrestle in TNA that when another retirement came to him, he became resolute on it happening on his terms alone, but so far this hasn't been confirmed.
    • Angle later revealed in 2020 that, even before that, the original plan was for the "Illegitimate Son" ang-story with Jason Jordan to continue much further than it did, with Angle eventually making Jordan the assistant GM of RAW, causing the two to begin butting heads until they eventually came to blows in the ring, where Angle would be retired by Jordan. Unfortunately, Jordan was put on the shelf by injury and never returned to the ring, killing the story dead and forcing them to come up with a new plan (which ended up being "Constable Corbin" and all that followed).
  • In 2021, Angle revealed that he was meant to be the first Undisputed WWF Champion at Vengeance 2001. However, one week before the event, Vince McMahon changed the plan and gave the title to Chris Jericho, since he was very popular with the fans and the belt would benefit Jericho (who hadn’t had an official world title run yet) more so than Kurt (who had already won the world title multiple times already), to which Angle agreed with.
  • Kurt has talked about wishing he could have had a match with Bret Hart who had to retire from the ring while in WCW for health reasons not long after Kurt debuted in the WWE. In the early 2000s, Kurt had contacted Bret about a potential match, unaware that Bret had suffered a stroke and was in no condition to perform. When Bret explained he wasn’t able to compete, Kurt assured him that he would take care of Bret and carry the match but Bret still declined. In the latter years of Kurt’s career as age and injuries caught up with him, Kurt noted he now understands not wanting to compete if it can’t be done at 100% ability.
  • All Elite Wrestling were interested in signing him early on, both as a wrestler or as a manager figure, but Kurt respectfully declined each contract offer.