Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Kurt Angle On Never Having A 5 Star Match, Gable Steveson, "Man Who Plays With Boys" Promo

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Kurt Angle (@realkurtangle) is a WWE & TNA Hall of Famer and Olympic Gold Medalist. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his house in Pittsburgh, PA to talk about his podcast called "The Kurt Angle Show", why he doesn't consider himself the greatest of all time, his reaction to never having a 5 Star match according to Dave Meltzer, his list of matches that should have been rated 5 stars, his favorite matches in TNA, working with AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Sting, his thoughts on Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson, his "man who pays with boys" promo in WWE, the moonsault off the cage onto Ken Anderson in TNA, wanting to retire against John Cena at WrestleMania 35 and much more! Sponsors:  Use the code CVV to get your first month of BlueChew for FREE at http://bluechew.com  MANSCAPED - Get 20% off and free worldwide shipping with the code CVV at manscaped.com   To get 15% off go to http://mudwtr.com/cvv to support the show and use the code CVV15  Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to http://TryMiracle.com/CVV and use the code CVV to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF Quote I'm thinking about: "Most already know what to do and simply don’t do it. It’s not ignorance. It’s fear." - Alex Hormozi For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blin. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another one here on Insight. I'm CPP, Chris Van Fleet, and we've got a big one on today's show. Oh, it's true. It's damn true. The WWE Hall of Famer and the TNA Hall of Famer,

Kurt Engel, is back with us for the first time in three and a half years. It's been a while. You can check out that first time. first interview, I guess it's also our last interview on my YouTube channel, or you can go way back here on the podcast. It's January 2020. Kurt is one of the all-time greats. He is such a good interview. And, you know, the thing that we can all agree, right, he's one of the greatest wrestlers ever. But it's like when you talk to Kurt, it's like somebody forgot to tell him because he is so incredibly humble. We talk about a ton of

different things going on in his world. It's crazy to think. He points it out here, but his first run in WWE was only six and a half years, then almost 10 years in TNA. And I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of people that didn't see the amazing work that he did there. I mean, with everybody that he was in the ring with, but specifically with people like someone with Joe, AJ Stiles, Sting, and the list goes on and on and on. Then back to WWE. And he said, he said this many times, but he said here he wanted his retirement match against John Sina. And, you know, WrestleMania 35, ironically, they were both in the same building. At the same time, it didn't happen.

Kurt Engel's final match was against Baron Corbyn, which we actually talked to Baron Corbyn, about that if you want to go back a few weeks and check out that interview. But so many great stories here from Kurt Engel, and we also talked about like some of his greatest moments, like the moon salt onto Mr. Kennedy or Ken Andrews. of the time in TNA off of the cage. We talk about that front flip off the stage to Abyss, which was crazy. We talk about the man playing with boys. Promo. So much good stuff here. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, please take a screenshot, tag us, and we'll share it out. He's at Real Kurt Engel. I'm at Chris Van Fleet and go check out Kurt's podcast called The Kurt Engel Show.

Wherever you're listening to this right now, go give it a follow. And if you're not already following insight. Go take a second right now. Check. Does it say following or does it just say follow? And if it says follow, click follow. So you don't miss out on anything that we have coming up. And I got to say, I got to say, we've had some big, big interviews over the last few weeks and I guess few months as well. I mean, think about it. Cody Rhodes. We've had LA night on the show. Yeah, twice this year. Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Undertaker, DDP, and the list goes on and on and on. So if this is one of the first episodes that you've ever listened to, go back and listen

to, I mean, this is episode number 508. So go back and listen to one or two or 15 of them. And send me a tweet. Let me know which one you enjoyed the most. But for now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kurt Engel. Kurt, always good to see you. Thanks so much for jumping on. Thanks for having me on, Chris.

Now, always good to see you. I like that we're in the Anglepot headquarters. That's what that sign says behind you there, right? Yeah, my wife built this structure here in the background. You know, it's basically I got them from fans. This is art from a fan. That was the stand-up fan gave it to me. I guess they ordered it on www.com,

but they ended up giving it to me. So these are two gifts from my fans. And we can't quite see it, but that stand up there is wearing the cowboy hat. Incredible. Yeah, yep, the famous cowboy hat. The one I wore was still calling it. Same exact one.

Oh, wow. That's amazing. Speaking of your podcast, you said it a few weeks ago that if you had stayed in WWE, you would have been the greatest of all time. Kurt, I think I speak for everybody when I say you already are the greatest of all time. No, I think if you want to be the greatest of all time in one company,

you're going to have to be there for 20. 20 years, at the very least. I think that's a fair assessment when you're talking about, like, wresters, especially look at Sean Michaels and Undertaker. You know, they spent over 30 years there. You know, I've only been there nine years total. And that was six and a half before I left and then two and a half after. So I didn't put in the amount of time that you would consider to be the greatest of all time.

So, you know, you list off Sean Michaels and the Undertaker. Are they the goats for you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, there are a lot of people I can throw up there, you know, about Rushmore of wrestlers, but, you know, Stone Coltsy Boston, you know, Eddie Guerrero. There's so many talented wrestlers. It's really hard to pick the greatest of all time.

It truly is because fans, they have their preferences and they're going to pick who they like. And I don't think you're ever going to get like a, you know, out of 100 votes, you're not going to get a hundred votes. you're not going to get 100 votes for one person being the greatest small time of stock and work. So, you know, you spend a lot of your career in TNA. There's like a decade. Your career you spend in T9.

Yeah, yeah. So, I love it. Could you be the goat of TNA? I didn't spend 20 years there either. I mean, nobody spent 20 years there. The company just turned 20 years old. Yeah. Well, you know what?

I don't know. I mean, you know, you look at some of the guys that were there, Sting, AJ Styles. you know, Samoa Joe, there were a lot of formidable wrestlers, and I got the opportunity to work with us guys. I was utterly surprised when I got the TNA that these guys weren't in WW already because they were so talented. But I knew eventually someday they would get there, and they did. I had a really interesting conversation with Hurricane recently, Shane Helms, and we were talking about how, you know, Hurricane's comedy stuff was so, so good. And I think that if there was a Mount Rushmore of comedy wrestlers, it's Ard Truth, it's Santino, it's Hurricane. And I also think it's you.

And I think people sleep on the fact that not only were you one of the best in the ring, your comedy stuff was so, so good. I don't know how. I didn't know how I did it. I was never a funny person. Actually, I was never a talker. When I started in WWE, nobody trained me to learn how to cut a prom. Now they have NXT and they have the amenities to do that. But back then, you know, it was sink or swim.

You know, Vince actually told me that the first night on the air. He said, I want you to cut this promo. This is what I want you to say, sink or swim. And, you know, he taught, he said something for five minutes straight. He's telling me what he wants me to say. And I'm not listening because I'm like, holy crap, this is a really long promo. And when he got done, I said, Vince, I'm sorry, but I didn't hear a word he said, can you repeat it? repeat it. He said, I'll repeat it one more time. You've got to go out there. And if you

don't succeed, you're going to sink. You're done. If you do it fairly well or well, then you will swim. You won't sink. You won't sink. You won't drown is what he said. There's this interesting thing about when amateur wrestlers get into pro wrestling. It's the idea of like being on your back, right? Like as an amateur wrestler, you never want to be on your back. And in pro wrestling, that's one of the first things you learn is like how to fall flat on your back. I'm curious. Do you remember taking your first bump and like what it felt like? Well, you know what?

The first bump I took, I actually quit. I was like, this is self-reuse. I'm not doing this. I told my minute. I got up and walked out of the ring. I said, I can't do this. And he said, just stay for the day, get through the day and see how you feel afterward. And I did.

And, you know, I roughed through it. but I'm not going to lie to you. It was crazy. It was crazy that these guys bump themselves in the ring. And being an amateur wrestler, you're taught to take the person down. You know, you take them down, and you control them, and you stay on top of them.

You're not used to fall into your back. So what I did is I forgot everything I ever learned. I cut off my instincts, because if I would have went in there with my instincts actually on, I wouldn't have been able to bump backward. I would have been using my amateur wrestling techniques. But I forgot everything I learned, and I put myself in my opponent's hands and said,

do what you want with me. And that's how I learned. And I learned very quickly because of that. But that is so much easier said than done. And everyone points to how quickly you picked up pro wrestling. Is it just because you were like everything I learned before? I just don't remember it now. And I'm like, Clay mold me?

Yeah. I let them mold me. me and I didn't try to mold myself. I wasn't trying to make sure I had all my amateur wrestling moves in there. I didn't have a move set when it started. I decided to start from defense first. So I left my opponents attack me and do whatever they want with me. Once I got comfortable with that, I started adding my offense in. And that's where it really worked. And that's when the light bomb went off in my head. And I understood what I had to do. And I, you know, knowing that my instincts weren't taking over anymore that I was actually using my head the whole time, thinking the

whole time, which is what you do with psychology and wrestling. You know, you always want to think ahead of what's going on. And you're going to have to improvise at certain times, and at certain times you're going to have to memorize. But it's a very tricky art form. Do you remember like a specific match or moment where you were like, okay, yep, I figured this out? I would probably say, oh, man, probably my match with Chris Benoit, I can't remember when it was or where it was. It was before my first WrestleMania, and Chris and I had this match, and it was phenomenal, and I felt like I kind of got into my own groove. It was a pay-per-view before WrestleMania, and it was against Chris Benoit. And that's when I thought, okay, I think I'm starting to get this.

I'm starting to learn because I was clueless. You have to understand. I only trained for seven months before I went on TV. That's literally nothing. And four of those months were only four days a month, a month training up at the W&B headquarters. And the rest of the month, I stayed at home doing nothing. So I didn't have much training. So they just told me learn on the job.

And I was learning on the job. And what I was very fortunate of is Vince really pushed me hard at the beginning. Like, you know, he pushed me to the top, you know, within a few months. And it was like, whoa, you know, I need to get a hold of this. I need to learn what I'm doing. And before I get to that level. But Vince was, he was rushing me. He was pushing me hard.

So I was forced to learn on the job. It really was. The work you did with Chris Benoit, I think a lot of fans point to is, like, Those are some of your best matches. Those might even be some of the best matches in WWE, period. And your name came up recently when I talked to Dave Meltzer, and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. Yeah.

According to Dave, you've never had a five-star match. No, I don't know if Dave likes me or not or what's going on. But you know what? It's his opinion. I will respect that. I do understand he's very knowledgeable with wrestling. Maybe he just doesn't like my style. I don't know.

But it's unfortunate that I'll have a five-star match from him, considering that people take his word as valuable. You know, they look at him and say, okay, this is the guy that rates the matches, and he's pretty accurate with it. So, you know, I just, I don't know what to say. I'm really surprised I haven't had one five-star match, but, you know, that's his opinion.

And I have to respect that. Look, I think we're all surprised you haven't had like 10 five-star matches when you look at it. But does that bother you at all? No, no, because it's only one person's opinion. I do have somewhat of a respect for Meltzer because of all the years he's put in. So I would love to have a five-star match rating. But, you know, he just didn't feel that I did. And like I said before, it's his opinion.

If we were to make a list right now, you and I, of Kurt Angle five-star matches, where do we begin? Oh, God. Undertaker, No Way Out, 2006. Sean Michaels, WrestleMania 21. Eddie Guerrero, SummerSlam 2004. Brock Lesner, Iron Man match on Smackdown. Geez, I would say A Rock, my first world title

against the Rock. There are a lot of matches. I'm sorry, man. I would say, me personally, I would rate myself five stars for about 20 of the matches. But that's not necessarily going to be true. Which AJ Styles match is a five-star match? Oh, gosh, every match with AJ. You know what, that kid is so talented.

I literally didn't have to do anything when I worked with him. He flew around. All I did was catching. He was so talented and just an incredible high fire. Also a great heavyweight wrestler. He has all the tools to be considered one of the greatest of all time. I've had incredible matches with AJ. And I'm moderately surprised that Meltzer didn't rate any of those matches five star, too.

Kurt, according to Dave Meltzer, there's only been one five-star match in the history. of TNA. And whose was it? It's AJ versus Joe versus Daniels, the three-way for the exhibition.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you mentioned Joe, like the matches with you and Joe are incredible. Like at least one of those is a five-star match.

Yeah, I would think so, but it didn't happen. When we look at TNA and, I mean, you were there for a good chunk of,

you know, TNA's history. what for you is the heyday of TNA? What's TNA's prime, in your opinion? I would say when we signed Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Booker Tee, this all came like within like two years, two years span. All these guys came in and we started, we formed the main event mafia. And I think the main event mafia was definitely the highlight of TNA.

There are also other factions that did really well. The one that, what was it called? The one that Bully Ray was in. Aces and Aces and Ates. That was a really good one. But I think TNA's Prime was when they had those factions at that particular time. Probably between 2008 and 2012. It was really good.

Our ratings were up too. We were doing over 2 million viewers a week, which was pretty impressive for Spike TV. That was the time when you guys were. went head-to-head with Roth for a handful of weeks. Big mistake. Big mistake. You know, I always told the boss, Dixie Carter, and I said, listen, there's no shame to be a number two.

You know, WB is a machine, and nobody's going to pass them up. Not TNA, nobody ever. And I said, you'd just be happy with number two, but she wanted to be number one. And, you know, we took chances and, you know, some of it backfired on us. and we lost a lot of money doing it, but at least we tried. I mean, I think it was exciting to see, like you talk about, I mean, almost 3 million people were tuning into impact at that point in time. It was really cool, man. You know, knowing, now don't get me wrong, when I was in WV at one point, we were doing 10 million viewers a week during the attitude era.

So I never thought in a million years, TNA would get to that level. But then the business started calming down. and, you know, WW was getting three, four million viewers. But then TNA came on. And, you know, when we started doing 2.1, 2.2 million, that was pretty impressive for a small company like TNA. Yeah. There are so few surprises in wrestling.

But when you signed with TNA, like I feel like everybody was legitimately surprised. I'm so curious, what did you guys do to make sure that that was kept a secret? Dixie Carter told everybody, listen, don't say a word. Anybody that knew about it, please do not say a word. The office knew the wrestlers didn't know because they flew me down to Nashville to do a promo video for when I debuted.

And the employees there had to sign NDAs that they wouldn't tell. And if they did, they would get sued. So they got their very tight lip. I was really impressed by that. The night that they showed me, I think it was at a pay-per-view after the pay-per-view, the wrestlers were more surprised in the fans.

They're like, holy crap, her angle's coming. So they kept it tight left. I was really impressed with that. And, you know, and pro wrestling, it's really hard to keep anything a secret. They were able to do that. So that's the promo where you're like, it's real, it's damn real?

And then the very evil laugh at the camera? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was me, you know, barking at the WWE, to be honest to be I love the yeah like you would do it in TNA frequently you would look at the camera

yeah I can't do it nearly as well as you I can't do it anymore either oh come you feel like there's nothing you can't do anymore I'm not hey ever since I retired I lost my intensity I did so you only have two eyes now

is that what you're saying I don't have intensity. I have integrity and the intelligence blew out the window too. Just one of the three odds now? Yes. I don't know. I saw recent photos of you and like you're you're insane shape and I know that you work out really hard and you've got the supplements which I know is a big part of this. But I feel like just from looking at you, it's like I feel like Kirk could still go. I wish, you know what, my quality of life right now, Chris isn't so good. I have my needs for

place about a year ago. I have back surgery about four months ago. I have to have my shoulder replace. I still have another neck surgery coming up. That will be my fourth neck surgery. I really paid the price wrestling as long as I did. I wrestled amateur wrestling for 20 years and then pro for 20. And looking back, sometimes I regret maybe I should have retired five years earlier. Because, you know, it comes to a point in time in your life where you're older and you want to play with your kids. And here I am having these surgeries. I can't really do anything with them. I can't pick them up. I can't play with them. I can't run with them. So it gets a little disgruntling that I'm not able to be the father than I want to be. And what I'm doing now is I'm having these

surgeries to have a better quality of life so I can play with them. And I just want to make it fast because these kids are growing up quickly and I don't want to miss it. Are you in pain like every day with what you have going on? Every day, every day. My back, my shoulder. My knees are good. My knees feel great. They've recovered really well.

I'm 100% with my knees. But my neck and my back and my shoulder, I have a lot of pain running all day long all night. So it's something I just have to deal with until I have these surgeries and until I recuperate. I wonder if some DDPY could help you out. You know what? I should be doing it. And I wish I would have when I was wrestling

because I do believe that I would have a longer career and I would have been healthier right now. And I decided not to. I didn't do any maintenance when I was wrestling. I didn't even, I barely stretched. I would just twist my hips like this a couple of times and go out wrestling. And being lazy,

caused me to um for my body to um damage even further and uh i could have done a lot of maintenance and kept it look at chris look at chris jericho and ray mysterium yeah they do yoga they're still wrestling they've been wrestling for almost 30 years now there's a reason for that because they took care of the bodies do you think there was you know maybe a period of time probably in tna where you're like man i should take some time off i shouldn't push this so much but i just want to keep going? Yeah, yeah, there were a lot of times I did that. But the cool thing about being in TNA is, you know, I had surgery on my neck at one point, and I had to be out for nine months. And Dixie Carter paid me my full salary the whole time. She was really cool. You know,

when I got in trouble and, you know, I had my problem with alcohol. You know, Dixie Carter, let me take a break. I want the rehab. She let me stay at home. for five months after rehab, she let me heal mentally and physically. And I owe her a lot for that. So she was a great boss, and she was really cool about making sure that I was healthy, mentally and physically. But I'm not going to lie, even. There were times where I should have taken more breaks, and I didn't, because I loved it.

I loved being there, and I loved working for Dixie and doing what I had to do to make the company better. This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. And if you've ever been thinking of trying Blue Chew, how about your first month for free? Yeah, when you use the promo code CVV at checkout at bluechew.com, you'll get your first month for free. You just have to pay $5 for shipping. Guys, this is the same active ingredients as Viagra, Sealis, and LaVitra, but it's intuable tablets and a fraction of the cost. And the best part, it's all done online. There's no doctor's visits, no awkward conversations, no waiting in line at the pharmacy. And look, even if you don't

struggle in the bedroom department, this is kind of a fun thing to try. And I promise you, the Mrs. or the girlfriend or whoever it is is going to be a big fan of this too. Bluechew.com. Use that promo code, CVV, at checkout, and you get your first month for free. You just have to pay $5 for shipping. That's Bluechew.com. You.com. The promo code is CVV. There's a few highlights from your time in TNA that get replayed all the time, like even to this day. And I think the one that immediately pops into my head is the moonsault off the cage to Ken Anderson. I actually talked to him about it. He told me this story that you guys were supposed to originally have a 23-minute match and they cut it down to like 10

minutes. And then you go out there and he said that you told him, don't worry about it. going to keep going. Yeah, I was pissed off. They cut our match a lot of time. I was like, screw that. We're taking our 23 minutes. So you know what? You don't do that in pro wrestling.

I shouldn't have done that. That's the wrong thing to do, unfortunately. But I knew this match was really special. I knew Ken and I were going to have this great match. And let me explain why. Okay, Vince Russo put this match together. He set the rules for me. the match. It made no sense because they wanted to match in a cage, okay? But you can't climb out

the win. You have to, you can't get pinned to win. The only way you can win is going outside the door. So they painted us in a corner. Because what are we going to do? Why do we want to climb the cage to have stunts off the cage if you can't leave the cage over the top and win? So why would you climb in the first place? So we had to think. of ways we had to get creative and think of ways of why we would go up there. And it was a really tough match to put together because we were limited to just leaving the door. And, you know, if you just have two guys trying to leave the door and that's what the whole match is all about. It's going to be boring as hell. So we had to get creative.

We had to think of reasons why we had to climb a cage and why we had to use the cage. And we're not having pins really. We couldn't have any fault. finishes. So that kind of sucks. So they painted us in the corner and I was pissed off. So I was like, I'm taking all the time I want. And we ended up taking the whole 23 minutes. We might have taken more than that, actually. What are you thinking when you're climbing up there and you're about to do that moonsault from that height? Pray to God I don't get injured. I even did the silent cross right before I went. Yeah, it's scary, man. You know what? I, I, I, I, I never practiced it before.

My first moonsault ever was on Bob Holly, and I broke his arm. I felt short because I never did it before, and I never practiced, so I didn't know how far out I was going to go. And I came up short, my legs hit his arm, and broke his arm right in half. And so never practicing it, you know, those aren't the moves you want to practice, because the bumps are so hard, the ridiculous and hard. So that somebody just say, what the heck just go, you know, and hopefully you land properly. I mean, in this one, you landed, it almost looked like you landed on Ken's face.

I did land on his face. You know, but, you know, I don't know. The thing is, I ended up covering him, but I didn't know if hitting him on his face was really going to hurt him enough to pin him. You know, I don't know. But if I would have landed on his stomach, he could have sold his stomach. but it's really hard to start your face. Sure. Another clip that gets brought up all the time

is when you run off the ramp, you do the full somersault, and then you land there. Like, I don't know, it seems so, like, such a risky mood, but you also made it look so easy. You know what?

I knew Abyss was going to catch me. And that's why I wasn't that concerned about it. He's a big dude, and as long as you land on him, you know you're not going to get hurt. So he was a lot of the reason why I did it. I wouldn't have done it with anybody else. But I know this guy, you know, he's 350 pounds big. He was going to catch me. He was going to make sure it was safe. So I was cool with it.

During those 10 years in TNA, was there ever a point of time that you were ever going to go back to WWE? Yeah, I thought about it all the time. Don't get me wrong, I really love TNA. The thing is, when I started thinking about going back to WWE was when the money, you know, started running out. And people are getting let go or people are getting laid off. And, you know, I signed my last contract with them. I think it was for five more years. And I figured, you know what, after this contract is up,

they probably won't have the money to pay me because they were paying me seven figures. So, and it was a part-time deal. So I knew that they probably wouldn't give me that money that I was making. So I figured, you know what, it's time to think about going back to WWE. And I also wanted to go back because I wanted to go back for the fans and to thank them, the WW universe, because I had six and a half incredible years in WWE. And I wanted to go back and thank the fans personally and perform for them before I retired.

How close were we to getting you versus John Cena for your retirement match? Well, I would have had to stay another year. I was doing a program with Baron Corbyn when I decided I was going to retire. The reason why I decided to retire is because I wasn't me anymore. I was a half a step behind. I looked like I was old when I was wrestling. I didn't like what I saw. And, you know, Vince wanted me to keep wrestling.

And I told him, listen, this WrestleMania, I think it was 36, I think, was when I retired. I can't remember. 35. New York. Okay. And I wrestle Baron Corbyn, and I asked Vince, hey, can I have John Cena? Because I started his career, I think it would be proper if he ended my career. And Vince said, no, you have Baron Corbyn.

You've been doing a program with him for six months. You have to continue. But if you want Sena, you can have next year. And I said, well, I'm only going to go to this WrestleMania. He said, well, then you're going to wrestle Baron Corbyn. Are you okay with that? I said, yeah, that's fine. So I wasn't able to get seen up.

He gave me the option. If I wanted to continue on and wrestle another year, then I could wrestle. Yeah, but think about it. The next year, WrestleMania was in front of no audience. I know. I feel like this actually kind of worked out better. You got to say goodbye to the fans. Yeah, yeah.

That would have been hard to retire the following year during the pandemic. You know, how do you say by the fans when they're not there? Although, I guess the most heartbreaking part about Russell Mini 35 is John Cena was there, right? He was unannounced, came out, made that surprise, entrance. You know how pissed I was because he was there. And I was like, we could do this right now, you know? He came up to me and said, hi. I was like, I didn't even know you're going to be here.

He said, yeah, I was going to make a surprise. I was like, you know, I wanted you. You said, yeah, I wanted you too. And, you know, it's just unfortunate. Yeah, just like it feels like in hindsight, It could have made sense, right? You're both there. I don't know.

I mean, it is what it is, right? Close but no cigar, Chris. That's one of those, I think, what if matches. What's another match in your career that just never ended up happening? I think the last time we talked to was like you versus Brett Hart could have maybe happen at some point in time, but just didn't. Brad is my number one pick always will be. I love his style.

I love the way he worked in the ring. I knew that I would have great chemistry with him. But another one I really love watching right now today is Kenny Omega. He's such a great talent. I love his style. You know, he reminds me a lot of AJ, AJ styles. He has great heavyweight wrestling skills, and he also has a lot of high-flying stunts that are incredible, remarkable.

So I would love to wrestle him. If that was an opportunity, if I had an opportunity, And I was five years younger, I definitely would take that up, definitely. Would you imagine Kurt Engel versus Kenny Omega in Japan? That would be awesome. That's where it should be, too. That is where it should be. When you think about people who've gone from amateur wrestling to pro wrestling and

knocked it out of the park, there's obviously no one better than you. But I'm really curious what your thoughts of Gable Steven are. Like, he's following your footsteps here. I heard, first of all, he's an incredible athlete. You know, he's not only incredible on the mat wrestling. I mean, this kid, you know, he can do backflips. He's really athletic, super athletic. And I think he's going to have a great future.

I just don't know how entertaining he's going to be. I know that he loves to talk. A lot of his friends and I talk to say he's kind of a loud mouth, which is kind of good. Because you want to be able to, you don't want to be shy when you're in this. You know, I was a shy kid, and when I went to WWE, I had to learn how to suck it up and just go out there and put everything on the line. And it was really a hard transition for me.

But I think Gabriel Stevenson will have the same thing. He'll probably, you know, have to, you know, break that mold of being an amateur wrestler. Because as an amateur wrestler, you show no emotion. You go out there, you focus, and you wrestle, and you go for the pen. It's not like pro-restle where you have to show people emotion. You have to show if you're scared or if you're mad or if you're, you know, excited. So there's a lot of, you have to have incredible charisma. And I think that Gable has that.

I just don't know how well he's going to translate that when he starts talking. I do remember doing a pre-tap with him in Pittsburgh. And he did all right. You know, he didn't do incredibly well, but he did well that it was like, okay, this kid, he has potential. I think he's going to be pretty good. So I expect him to have a great career. I don't know if he's going to have the career I had, but I think he could. He could definitely.

Well, he's out there wearing his gold medal, and I think there's a lot of fans going. That looks familiar. Hey, I heard they have a pony strap staff. doing the ankle lock. So, you know, I think it's a brilliant thing because the fans are like, whoa, you're trying to be Kurt Engel, and we don't like it. Yeah, the crowd is chanting.

You're not Angle. Yeah, you know, it's crazy. I think they wanted that. The WWE, they're not stupid, man. They want him to be a heel starting out. That's why I was too. So I think it was a really smart decision to do that. Now you have made him something where the fans care about him.

Because, you know, when you come in and they see this Olympic gold medalist, they say, okay, dazzle us. Show us what you have. And he's going to have to go out there and prove himself. But if you have the fans not like him where they care about you, whether they love you or hate you, they actually care about you, that's good. And I think this was good because they don't know who he is. They know he's Olympic gold medalist. But they don't know what he's about. and if you make them a heel off the bat,

it's a lot easier than trying to make them a baby face. When we would see you out there wearing the gold medal that looked like your 1996 Atlanta gold medal with the green, what are we actually seeing there? With Gable? No, with you. Like, there was the one you would wear that was the red, white, and blue, like clearly like a...

Oh, yeah, yeah, my literally gold medals. I was wearing those. Okay, when I started in WWE, Vince McMahon, told me, I want you to wear as many gold medals as you can. He's like, you have a lot of gold medals in home. I said, yeah, from when I was a kid, he said, I want you to put those around your neck. So I was wearing like 25 gold medals, okay? And Vince wanted me to be like over the top.

He wanted me to heal out on the fans and just be this arrogant asshole, you know? And so I remember going to the arena and Jerry Briscoe, who was Vince's right arm man back then, he told me, hey, Vince wants you to wear those gold medals everywhere. I was like, what do you mean everywhere? He said, outside at the airport, in the restaurants, when you go home, when you're flying in the airplane, he wants you wear the gold medals all the time. I'm like, that's crazy. He said, yeah, but he wants you in character 24-7.

Wow. So I'm wearing these gold medals everywhere, and I end up going to Raw the next week. And I walk into the building, and Vince O'Benzhouen looks at me and says, why are you wearing your gold medals? I said, Jerry Briscoe said, you want to be to. He said, no, you only wear them when you're at the building. You don't wear them all over the place. So it was a rib on me.

And so what Vince did is he told me, you know what, you don't have to wear all these medals anymore. Just wear a couple of them. And then eventually a few months later, he said, where's your real gold medal? And I said, it's at home. He said, why don't you bring it with you? I want to make copies of them.

So they made molds of them and they made copies. And eventually I started wearing the gold medal with the green, what do you call it, the ribbon around it. So that's how I started wearing. It wasn't my real gold medal. It was two copies. They were duplicates. Oh. Where does your gold medal live now?

In a shape. And the reason is I, one of my kids one day was playing with it and they had the ribbon. They were flinging it around and they accidentally let it go and it hit the wall. and there's a huge dent in my gold medal. I was like, okay, no more. These kids aren't playing with my gold medal anymore. I'm going to keep it in a safe, and I'll bring it out whenever I need to go to an appearance

or whatever to, if I'm doing a speaking engagement. So I keep it in a safe now, away from my kids. I love that there's a dent in your gold medal, but likely not a dent in your wall. You know, well, you know, there was a huge dent in my wall from that. My wife was pretty pissed off. So that happened too. I want to go back to some of your comedy moments.

I think one of the big ones for me is sexy Kurt. Did you come up with the lyrics for sexy Kurt? No, I had a great writer, Chris. This kid was amazingly talented. And you know what? I don't blame him for doing this, but the Rock Storm from the W.O.E. Okay?

He used to write for The Rock, Chris Jericho, for me, Edge and Christian, and Hurricane Helms. You're talking about Brian? Is this Brian Gerwitz? Brian Gerwitz. Brian Goertz, yeah. Yeah. And so he wrote all my promos, and we had incredible chemistry.

He knew exactly what he wanted my character to be, and he knew I was going to be like a nerd milk drinking, you know, abide by the rules, but not really abide by the rules. Kind of like, you know, do things, say things that I want. I want people the way they should live their lives by the three eyes, but not really do it. You know, be a heel. And so Brian understood my character, and he wrote incredible material for me. The rap with John Cena, he wrote that, he wrote the sexy Kurt. He wrote just about everything. I don't know if you remember my promo, but Ray Mysterio, you're a boy in a man's world,

and I'm a man who loves to play with books. Like, he would come up with the funniest stuff. And I'd be cracking up. I literally couldn't wait to go to work every week to see what I was going to happen, what I was going to do next. I was so excited. My first year in the business was the funnest year of my life.

You must have been reading that man who plays with boys promo going, oh my God, this is incredible. I was. I was like, man, this is genius, you know? And like I was pretending like I was flubbing, you know. No, no, that's not what I meant. Ray, then I would say something. else and I mess up again.

It was a lot of fun. The fans absolutely loved it. You know what I love what the fans say to me? Kurt, I hated your guts when I was a kid. But now, looking back, what you did was hilarious and entertaining. And I understand why I hated you because you did a great job doing that. You made everybody hate you and you did your job. And I appreciate you for that.

And that's the best feeling I can get. That's the best of, you know, not advice, but it's the best message that I could get from the fence, yes. I just think your commitment to everything that you did, whether it was you being intense or whether it was you making us laugh our asses off. Your commitment to was, I think, unmatched. Well, you know what? There have been other guys. You know, you look at Roddy Piper and, you know, guys that were the frontier before. for me.

He was a guy that cracked me up. You know, I didn't watch pro wrestling a lot, but Roddy kind of became mainstream. And, you know, him and Hulk Hogan. And seeing Roddy, I remember a movie he did. It was an alien movie. It was really funny. And he was great in it. But, you know, I always wanted to be someone like Roddy and not someone that was just,

no disrespect to Brett Hart, but someone. that was just incredible in the ring. I wanted to be entertaining overall, like every aspect of pro wrestling. And I was lucky enough to do that. The United States Soccer Federation present the U.S. Soccer Podcast. My name is David Goss,

and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Clevenberg. And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Time's ticking. I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claimant, and they want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it.

Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are. The U.S. Soccer podcast, presented by Henco. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. I've always wondered, the King of the Ring spot with Shane McMahon, how many more times would you have tried if that glass didn't ever end up breaking? Well, okay. What happened was, I don't know if you know this, Chris, but it was supposed to be sugar glass, and it was plexiglass. So it was accidental. They were the wrong glass. So when I was throwing Shane through, he was bouncing off, and his head was landing on the hardwood floor, the concrete floor. And the first one

when I threw him through it, he didn't go through. I grabbed them, I said, listen, let's just move on. He said, no, throw me through the effing window. And I was like, okay, we'll do it again. I went to do it again. He bounced off again. I said, Shane, we can't do it again. He said, do it again. And I threw him the third time and he went through. And then I had to throw him back through the other way. And he bounced off one time.

And I said, screw it. And I threw him head first through it. Because I didn't want him to end up having a concussion. He landed on his head three tons on the concrete floor. And his dad was out of his seat getting ready to stop the match. He literally was, people were holding him back saying, bitch, don't go out yet. He starts taking care of him. Don't worry.

He won't get hurt. Vince was really pissed off about that. And I don't blame, that was his son. Yeah. Tell me about your supplements. I've seen you talking about them, and I assume that if I take them and, you know, work out as hard as I like to work out, I can look like you. You know what? I have a bag here of some of them.

They're called chicken snacks, and I have one that's organic plant protein. This is chicken protein. I have an organic plant protein called Snacksmart. We also have the way protein version. And these are crispy protein bites. They're incredible. They're 11 different flavors. They're all amazing flavors.

One is cinnamon swirl. This one's serracha. If you like spicy and sweet, this is really good. But you can order them at Physicallyfit.com. Go to physicallyfit.com. If you want 20% off your first order, use the towed angle pod. You get 20% off. Or if you want to be a member for life, 20% of it.

off for your rest of your life, be a lifetime member, go on the website and sign up. Physicallyfit.com, you get 20% off the rest of your life. I also have another supplement called American Dream Cookies and Cream Protein. It's made by Project One Nutrition. I partner with these guys, and they made this incredible protein because I love milk and cookies. They made cookies and cream protein for me, and it's incredible. It's the best taste of protein on the market. The way you can order it is Project1 Nutrition.com. Go on there. You can order my protein. It's called Kurt Engel. Kurt Engel's American Dream cookies and green protein. It's delicious. Go to Project1 Nutrition.com. I heard it's always so good to be able to catch up with you,

spend some time with you. You know what, Chris? You're easy, man. Your interviews are so great. I love doing them. Dude, you are, you are so kind. I love having you on. I feel like I could talk to you for 17 hours because you've got so many incredible stories. Thank you, man. I end every conversation with the same question because gratitude is such a big part of my life. Actually, I asked this of your wife when she was on the show, Giovanna. What are three things in your life, Kurt, that you're grateful for right now? My faith in Jesus Christ, my family, and you know what?

My health, knowing that besides aches and pains, knowing that I'm healthy, from a blood test perspective, and I don't have any kind of disease because my family, hereditarily, we have cancer. My family, we have diabetes. We have heart disease. But I don't have any of those,

and I'm very grateful for that. Actually, before we wrap this up, I don't know why I didn't start with this, you were one of the first wrestlers that I ever met. In 2001, I wonder if my camera can focus on this. I met you in Toronto. 2001, that's me in the middle of famous. Look at that, right?

And I got, it was, you did a signing with Christian and Tristratus in Toronto. I remember. The XFL kickoff party. I waited six hours in February, February 1st to get your autograph in Toronto. Little did you know 20 years later, you'd be sitting down with me doing an interview. Absolutely incredible. I want to thank you for your time then. And I want to thank you for your time now.

And, you know, in my books, Kurt, you truly are the greatest of all time. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much, my friend. All right. Take care. Oh, man, I could just talk to Kurt Engel for hours. What a great guy.

What a great conversation. And actually, after we finish recording, Kurt said he would love to do another one. And I said, okay, absolutely. The next one we do, I am flying to Pittsburgh. I am sitting down with you in person and we will do it there. We will do wherever is most convenient for you. But what a guy who has so many great stories. And I said it in the intro, but so, so humble.

Go check out his podcast called The Kurt Engel Show, wherever you're listening to this. And now that this episode's almost done, you can go look for an episode to listen to right after this one. Snap a screenshot. Let us know what you thought of this one and tag us. He's at real Kurt Engel. I'm at Chris Van Vleet, and I was listening to Alex Hermose, if you're not familiar with him.

He's an author. He's an entrepreneur. He has a lot of great insight, pun intended, and a lot of great quotes. So I will share this one that I think may really resonate with you. Most people already know what to do and simply don't do it. It's not ignorance, it's fear. So with that said, go out there and do what you know, you know, You should be doing.

Be great. Be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. With Lance Storm, by the way. I can't wait. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all.

Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of then? To Rock Bottom.

Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.