Kurt Angle On If He's One Of The All Time Greats, Starting His Pro Wrestling Career, More
Recently Kurt Angle sat down with Brandon Baxter's radio show to discuss his pro wrestling career and TNA's upcoming Jonesboro episode of Impact on March 28th. Here are some highlights from the interview.
His pro wrestling start in the Old Memphis Channel Five Territory: "Yeah yeah, they had a great program down there. Ya know, a loyal fan following. I wasn't down there very long, but I was down there enough to work out the kinks and work on my wrestling skills. What WWE did is they had me travel with them during the week, and then I'd go down to Memphis and do TV in a couple of their house shows, and then I'd be back on the road with WWE for Smackdown and Raw. And I did that for about four months before they started me on TV."
On what it was like transitioning from amateur wrestling to pro wrestling: "I wasn't the guy that took the reigns and lead somebody. I was the guy that let the person I wrestled, ya know, lead me so I could learn quicker. And it was hard to do that because, my whole life I had it instilled in my head to create the action and go by my instincts. But suddenly here I am. I have to let this guy slam me around half the time and I'm not ignoring the crowd anymore. I have to include the crowd. It was just a very confusing transition to me."
His thoughts on his reputation as one of the all time greats: "By my third year wrestling, I was already being pegged as the best in the business. And then by my fifth year it was could he be the greatest of all time? And I can't compare myself to Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels or Bret Hart or Triple H. Guys that have given 20, 30, 35 years when ya know, here I was, my fifth year in the business and people are already saying could he be the greatest ever? Here I am in my 13th year, and I still think it's relatively too early (to say that). People are going to think what they want to think, and say what they want to say. Everybody has their favorites. I might be somebody's favorite, Shawn Michaels might be somebody else's favorite, and Triple H might be somebody else's favorite. But, to be considered with those guys makes me very proud."