Charlie Haas Thinks WWE Stable May Have Influenced Team Angle Split
In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, former WWE superstar Charlie Haas took some time to talk about the highs and lows he experienced during his WWE run.
Many fans may know Haas best from his time teaming with Shelton Benjamin and being led by Kurt Angle. Together, they made the stable 'Team Angle', and Haas believes their run as a collective unit was too short. He also mentioned that Evolution, a top stable made up of Triple H, Ric Flair, Batista, and Randy Orton at the time, may have had something to do with the split.
"It should have been longer," Haas explained. "What people don't understand is at the time that we were getting hot on Team Angle [on SmackDown], who was getting hot on Raw, and that was Evolution. But when they have 4 guys and you have 3, when they do the mixed pay-per-views, we are starting to get a better reaction than them.
"I don't care what they say, you can ask Kurt that. Shelton may not say because he is with WWE now, but we were getting a better reaction than they were. And I think that had a lot to do with, 'Ok, it's time to split them, because they kept Evolution going. That's just the way it is."
Following Team Angle's breakup, Haas went on to a program in which he teamed with Rico and was managed by his now-ex-wife, Miss Jackie. He would win another tag team championship as part of that duo. However, Haas admits that this was a time in which he was struggling to find himself as a performer.
"I'll be honest with you man, I was lost. I was always a tag team wrestler, I was never a singles wrestler. Then all of a sudden, who is Charlie Haas? I had a really great match with RVD and a great match with Rico. And they put me with Rico, and we won the tag titles there," Charlie Haas recalled. "That was tough because I loved the character and I loved working with Rico, but other tag teams refused to work with us because they didn't want to be in the ring with Rico because of the character.
"It hurt him a lot, and I knew he was upset about that and some of them took it out on him in the ring physically when they had to. It was uncalled for with some of the stuff that he went through. I think today he is suffering through concussions and all that stuff, he is having some mental issues right now," Charlie revealed. "But we had a great tag team, we won the tag team titles. That was really cool."