Kurt Angle recently participated in a Reddit Q&A session; you can read a few highlights below:
Kurt Angle shares his feelings about having fans chant ‘You Suck’ at him:
The thing is, they were chanting Angle when I was starting to get over. Even though I was a heel, fans started liking the Kurt Angle character. And then Edge came in and they turned me really, deep heel and Edge came up with the idea of, “Hey, why don’t I tell everybody to chant, ‘You suck!’ instead of ‘Angle?'”
And they did it. And because I was heel for probably five to seven years when I was there, it was perfect. When I was a babyface, it was even better because we all knew how good I was. I mean, shit, you know, there were writers saying, “Gosh dang, Kurt Angle is only in the second year of his wrestling and he’s the best in the business!”
I knew how good I was. So the issue of, “You suck!” never really bothered me. I just kind of took it as a compliment as a babyface because the chants actually got louder!
I don’t know if I ever had that stigma that John Cena had. You know, the whole, “Let’s go, Cena / Cena sucks!” chant. I think there are people who genuinely don’t like John Cena probably because he has probably won, other than this past year and a half, I’ve never seen John end up losing. He was always on the winning end of programs. Vince McMahon made him literally invincible. I think it wasn’t because he didn’t have wrestling skills. Obviously, he did. It was that, “Oh god, he’s making me sick! He always wins!”
So there was a different aura about my, “You suck!” chants versus Cena’s, “Cena sucks!” chant. I also think it’s because I did lose a lot more than John. But John was a babyface. When I was a babyface, I rarely ever lost. But I was a heel a lot of times, so it was okay for me to bite the bullet here and there, so I wasn’t one of those guys that was one of those undefeated type of wrestlers. I was more, you know, fans looked at me like, “This is going to be a five-star match because Kurt Angle is wrestling and we don’t care who wins,” you know?
With John, it was, “God, he makes me sick because he always wins!”
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Angle reveals his favorite comedy segments in WWE:
(laughs) I loved it all! They were all special to me. I really believe doing the stuff with Austin was great. I loved doing my stuff with Triple H and Stephanie, too, which was the beginning of my career and it really set the tone for Kurt Angle and the direction he was going. So I have to thank those guys for that, and especially the writer Brian Gewirtz and Vince. But, Austin, that wasn’t even supposed to happen.
We both got injured at the same pay-per-view. It was when I was wrestling Shane in a street fight, Austin got thrown on a table by Booker T and cracked a bone in his back, in his vertebrae, so we were both out. Vince McMahon was like, “What am I going to do without my two top guys?” He said, “You know what? We’re going to put you two together and we’ll do some funny stuff!”
The personalities collided right from the beginning. I mean, the way Austin is and the way my character was, it was perfect chemistry. We were complete opposites and it worked extremely well. Even the stuff I did with Edge and Christian was kind of that same flavor. But those guys pretty much agreed with everything I said. Austin disagreed with everything I said. They were all special.
The “Sexy Kurt” and the battle rap with John Cena, they’ll always be special to me. But the Austin stuff was my favorite. We were injured for a couple months but every week Steve and I couldn’t wait to get to TV to see what was in store for the next week. There wasn’t really anything written out for us! Vince would be in the room and he would say, “Hey, listen, this is the idea I have. This is what we’re going to do. Just respond the way you want to but nobody in here laughs until I yell cut!” It was pure improv. I just let Steve lead, because Steve is a better leader with that kind of stuff. I wasn’t as good with the improv stuff unless I reacted to someone. So Steve and Vince took charge, and I just kind of followed. It worked out extremely well.
See what Outside Interference said needs to happen if Kurt Angle returns to WWE after his Hall of Fame induction:
