Kurt Angle has revealed what happened during his backstage wrestling match with Brock Lesnar, during their feud in the WWE.
The pair battled numerous times in 2003 over the WWE Championship, putting on some of the best matches in WWE history.
However, with their amateur wrestling backgrounds, there had long been backstage talk about who would win a real wrestling match between the two former WWE Champions.
During a shoot interview during his time in TNA, Kurt Angle spoke about a backstage wrestling match he had against Brock Lesnar, during his run in WWE.
Both Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar were accomplished amateur wrestlers, with Lesnar winning the NCAA Heavyweight Championship during his time in college.
However, Angle went one better, winning the Olympic Gold medal in wrestling in 1996 (and with a broken freaking neck, to boot). Despite this, there was always talk backstage that Lesnar could beat Angle in a shoot fight, something Angle vehemently denied.
“The first thing when I met him, we shook hands. We didn’t say much, and then someone said, ‘Hey, how do you think you’d do against Angle, you know, in a real wrestling match?’
And that he said, ‘I’ll kill him, he’s too small.”
“I didn’t kill him, I didn’t dominate him. It was a tight match. It’s just that I beat him, right? But rightfully so. I mean, you’re talking about an NCAA champion and an Olympic gold medalist.
Brock, if Brock would have gone on, continue the training, um, that’d be a different story. But, you know, there are two different levels and the experience and just the positioning alone. I knew Brock wasn’t going to score on me, right? And that’s, you know, he had a vicious double leg that nobody could stop. What’s the problem for me?
So the fact is I took him down a couple of times. He didn’t take me down at all, but we went 15 minutes. It was very, very close.”
As expected, Kurt Angle defeated Brock Lesnar in the fight, owing to his incredible skill that helped him win the Olympic gold medal in 1996.
He emphasises the difference in skill level between college and Olympic level, although humbly reveals that Brock made it closer than it should have been.
Angle also notes that if Brock Lesnar had continued to train in Olympic-style wrestling, he could have made it to a similar level to Kurt Angle in his prime.
Other wrestlers have tried to take down Kurt Angle in an amateur wrestling-style, including Xavier Woods and Vince McMahon.
