In a shoot wrestling match, there are very few wrestlers that Kurt Angle couldn't pin right away.
Speaking with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, Angle spoke about the 1996 Olympic Games and an encounter he had with future-WWE colleague, Mark Henry. As it goes, the U.S. Wrestling and Weight Lifting teams' gyms were adjacent to one another and some of the other wrestlers recruited Henry to test Angle's strength. Even though he was The World's Strongest Man, Henry's inexperience proved to be no problem for the soon-to-be gold medalist.
"That is true, yeah," Angle confirmed. "Mark Henry is the strongest man in the world, though. But, there are little tricks you can do in amateur wrestling to get out of the holds. The experience I had, Mark didn’t have any experience in amateur wrestling. So, he was just a big strong guy who didn’t know what he was doing."
Though few would want to test themselves against Angle, one of those people was not Vince McMahon. WWE's Chairman of the Board likes to test himself against the best the world has to offer, but if he fails is unlikely to try again.
"Yes! You didn’t hear about the plane ride from hell?," Angle said about whether or not Vince tried to wrestle him.
"That was the only time," he continued. "No, Vince will only try once. If he doesn’t succeed, he’s not gonna try again. Vince is one of those guys that wants to feel what it’s like to be up against an Olympic gold medalist or a World Champion boxer. He wants to feel that knock out. He wants to feel getting slammed. He’s crazy. The guy always tests himself. He wants to test himself against the best. If Mike Tyson was there, Vince would say, ‘Hey, let’s go one round,’ and Vince would do it. He really would. He would want to know how it feels to get knocked out by Mike Tyson. That’s just how Vince is."
There are very few people that could hang on the mat with an Olympian, and Angle is confident that it wouldn't take him long to pin most professional wrestlers.
"It wouldn’t take me long to finish them off. But, someone like Charlie Haas or Shelton Benjamin would take me a while. ‘Cause those guys are experienced wrestlers," Angle said.
As for who impressed him with their ability, despite not having the amateur background, Angle named Chris Benoit. Here is what he had to say:
"Maybe Chris Benoit. He was a very intense individual. He had a good little background of not really amateur wrestling, but he had an understanding of it. He was able to float with me and do different move sets and stuff that I was really surprised. Because he’d never wrestled an amateur match in his life. But, I think he would be an incredible amateur wrestling if he would have done it."
Angle signed with WWE in 1998 and stayed until 2006 when he moved to TNA. He remained there until 2016. In 2017 he rejoined WWE and was inducted into their Hall of Fame.
You can see our full interview with Kurt Angle at the top of the page, and can check out the Kurt Angle Show on AdFreeShows.com. You can also check out his nutrition line at this link.
