Abyss Looks Back At Kurt Angle's Reckless Dive Off The Stage (Video)
As earlier reported, "The Monster" Abyss will take his place in the Impact Wrestling Hall of Fame tonight, and the organization recently released a sneak peek video, promoting the new GWN series "My Best 5", where Abyss talked about working with former Impact Wrestling Heavyweight Champion, Kurt Angle.
Kurt made his debut for the promotion in 2006, and worked for Impact Wrestling until 2016. The current RAW General Manager put on a series of critically acclaimed matches with the likes of Abyss and Samoa Joe after joining the company, and Abyss shared his thoughts on working with the former Olympic gold medalist.
"Kurt and I wrestled a lot", Abyss said. "I was Kurt's very first match when he came over from WWE over to Impact. I was his first match on television, and that was a proud moment for me. Any time I had an opportunity to wrestle and work with Kurt, it was a special moment. One thing about Kurt, if you didn't match his intensity, then he'd eat you alive. And that's one thing I learned really quickly with Kurt. You better match his emotion, you better match his passion, you better match his fire in the match, and we did on several occasions.
"And that was one of them in 2008. To do that match was special for me, just because it was Kurt Angle, and it was special for him because it was an opportunity for him to kind of step out of being just Kurt Angle, and to be able to fight and brawl and do some of the stuff we did. And if you go back and look at that match, he fits right into that philosophy. I mean, we beat each other all over that building that night, it was Falls Count Anywhere. We went through walls, we came out of walls, it was a hard-hitting match.
"There's one spot in there that's infamous, where he did a running? just a dive, like a flip dive, running as hard as he could off the stage and onto me. We never had it called, we never talked about doing it. We got out there, and we were outside the ramp, we were on the edge of the ramp on the floor, and he gave me something really intense there? into a chair or something. I was pretty groggy for a second, and the next thing I know, I look up and he's up on the stage. So I had no idea, we had no idea he was doing that. And I turned around and he literally came? you watch that thing back, and he's literally coming at me 150 miles an hour as hard as he can.
"Kurt was reckless, wild abandoned? I mean he'd throw himself. You watch his matches over the years, and he will do anything and everything for this business, and to launch himself like he did, he cleanly knocked me off my feet, and (came) down about five or ten feet. It wasn't necessarily something we knew was coming. I didn't know it was coming, but it was definitely one of the most special moments of that match."