Julian Dorey Podcast - #247 - WWE Legend Kurt Angle on Murderous Billionaire, 5 Broken Necks & Olympic Gold

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Kurt Steven Angle is an American retired professional wrestler and amateur wrestler. He first earned recognition for winning a gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics despite competing with a broken neck, and achieved wider fame for his tenure in WWE and TNA. GUEST LINKS - IG: https://www.instagram.com/therealkurtangle/?hl=en - WEBSITE: https://kurtanglebrand.com/ FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey LISTEN to Julian Dorey Podcast Spotify ▶ https://open.spotify.com/show/5skaSpDzq94Kh16so3c0uz Apple ▶ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trendifier-with-julian-dorey/id1531416289 JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Kurt having a Broken Neck Wrestling, Kurt’s Insane Training Program 11:15 - Burn Out in Wrestling (Story of Kurt’s Cousin) 20:03 - Olympic Gold Medalist Goal, Exhaust Training 32:11 - Kurt’s Upcoming Movie, 2028 Mens Olympic Team 40:21 - Full Metal Knee Replacement, 94 Stepping Aside From Wrestling 49:20 - FoxCatcher Story (Kurt’s Coach Murdered), Insane Training & Diet 01:00:16 - Genetics vs Trained (Mentality) 01:04:26 - FoxCatcher & Du Pont Story, Meeting John Du Pont & Feelings 01:14:23 - Dave Schultz Wrestling Club, Mark Leaving Fox Catcher Early 01:25:11 - After Winning Trials & 2nd Opinion of Broken Neck 01:31:10 - Watching Tape of Opponents & Broken Neck Preparation 01:41:51 - Drugged Up & Fighting the Pain, Winning Gold Medal 01:49:01 - Post-Olympics & Mental Tiredness, Big Depression 02:02:25 - Learning Improv with Stone Cold Austin & Vince 02:10:45 - After 6 Months Right Back to WWE 02:15:15 - Kurt’s Sisters Addict & Tragic Story 02:20:19 - Getting Hooked on Pain Killers, TNA Wrestling Everyone Drinking 02:36:47 - Going to Rehab (Worst Experience Ever) 02:47:54 - Kurt’s Faith & Religion, Helping Addicts & Pain Kurt Lives With 02:54:03 - Multiple Concussions throughout WWE, Kurt Today & Current Fears CREDITS: - Host, Producer, and Editor: Julian Dorey - In-Studio Producer: Alessi Allaman: https://www.youtube.com/@alessiallaman Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 247 - Kurt Angle Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Because he knew he was off and he left. I mean, that's got to, I can't, as like the guy's brother, I can't even imagine what that feels like. You know, Mark warned Dave. He said, listen, the guy's not all there. And Dave thought, you know what? I met him. I think I can control him.

And he was able to control John for a while. You know, Dave was the only one that John listened to. And I believe that's when John cracked, Dave was the first one that he wanted to kill because... If you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. You can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you.

You know, Kurt, I was thinking about you in the gym this morning. That came out really wrong. Shit. That was a bad start. But in a good way. It was because, you know, I had seen your documentary a few months ago and it blows me away that somebody like you who is a human being just like me can have a broken neck and continue to train at a high level and not take a year off and get surgery and do all that because you have your eyes on this prize that you've been chasing your whole life? Like, how do you mentally get around something as scary and dangerous and life-threatening as a broken neck to continue training? You know what? I just wanted to succeed. I just wanted to win an Olympic gold medal. And it was

my dream for my whole entire life. And I've always been hobbled with injuries. And, you know, in college, I had a few knee injuries where, you know, it set me back to where I didn't win a national title one year. I actually took second. And so I'm used to being injured. I've been injured 90% of my career.

And I learned how to work around injuries. And not that, you know, that was okay to have a broken neck and it was going to be an easy adjustment for me to wrestle in the Olympics. But that's what I set out to do. And I felt like nobody was going to stop me from doing it. The only one that could have stopped me is the doctor if he wouldn't have cleared me to wrestle. But he did. So I knew I was able to do it. And as long as I knew the doctors were okay with it, I was okay with it. Those were some old school doctors too, right?

Yeah. There weren't a lot of liabilities in the mid nineties, you know, like today you, you do that today, man, you're not going to get away with it. Yeah, probably for the best, to be honest with you. But I just, like, to see someone go after their dreams and do things that other people are not willing to do is always inspiring to me, no matter what it is. Thank you. And to look at the schedule you had. You said you were training like 10 hours a day,

six to seven days a week. What was a day like? A day I wake up in the morning early, I would do a six-mile run, about 35 minutes. Then I would do 20, 100-yard hill sprints with my partner on my back. So I'd sprint up and jog down, sprint up, jog down with the partner on my back. And then I would do an hour of airdyne uh where i would go a minute really hard and then a minute where i was going idle and i'd do that for about an hour then i would stretch and do the sauna and then uh my morning session would be done

then the afternoon session was you know working on technique for an hour and a half then wrestling live for two hours then i would do conditioning for about an hour. Wrestling live for two hours. Yeah. Yeah. Every day. Yes. So I would do that and then I would condition for an hour and then that would be my afternoon. And then my evening training was weight training, strength training, plyometrics, working on my core and more cardio, more conditioning. So I'd say I was doing a total of about 10 hours a day, and I was doing it every single day. I took a half a day off one day a week, one day a month.

Good for you. One day a month. Good for you. You earned that. You know what? When you're an athlete training for the Olympics, and you are so prone to training all the the time your body recovers a lot quicker because it's used to being under that amount of stress every single day of working out and

training so my recovery time only took me like six eight ten hours that's usually usually for an average person it's two days recovery time but But just for me, I just needed six to eight hours. But also for like the above average person who trains hard, you know, maybe five, six days a week or whatever, lifts every day, does things like that, is in phenomenal shape. They're not – like they're doing two hours maybe. Right, right. 90 minutes. It won't take long to tell you Nutrile's ingredients. Vodka. S soda, natural flavors.

So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Doing three sessions that's almost 10 hours. And you said you ran six miles in 35 minutes? 35 minutes. A little under six minutes a mile.

How tall are you? 5'11". And how much did you weigh then? 210 pounds. Yeah. 210 511 built like a brick shithouse running less than six minute miles four six not bad huh that's i don't know if that's a little that might be a little bit of genetics too it might be i think so i think so yeah was that like that mentality though to be able so. Yeah. Was that like that mentality though, to be able to train and work like that? Was that something you started doing as like a little boy? Like,

were you pushed to do it or? Yeah. I mean, I had four older brothers. They were all wrestlers and I wanted to be like them. And they, they taught me the work ethic that I needed. My father too, and sports were always important to him. So, you know, we all became wrestlers. And the crazy thing, I do want to tell you this short little story. The reason why we got into wrestling is because my brothers were getting so much trouble when I was younger.

They were getting in fights, stealing stuff. You know, at one point they were dealing drugs. I mean, it was really bad. And my brother Mark ended up going to Juvenile Delinquency Center his ninth grade year because he'd gotten too many fights. And he actually beat up two cops. And he stole a bike, and he was running from the cops or riding away from the cops. Cops caught up to him and tried to stop him.

He knocked both of them out. My brother Mark was 5'11", 185 pounds in eighth grade. So he was like a kid in a man's body. So he knocks these cops out and he rides home. And little does he know, the cops knew who he was and where he lived. So there were cops waiting for him at home. And they took him away. And he went away for two years.

And every weekend we would go see him. He would threaten my mom, I'm going to break out. If you don't get me out of here, I'm going to break out. took him away and he went away for two years and uh every weekend we would go see him he would threaten my mom i'm gonna break out if you don't get me out here i'm gonna break out and he was just out of control so when he got back home after two years of being in uh juvenile delinquent center uh the wrestling coach came to the house and he said i want to talk to your son mark he talked to my parents he said i want to talk to your son, Mark, and tell him, you know, wrestling might be a great alternative. So it will keep him out of trouble. Right.

You know, so he asked my brother, hey, you want to wrestle? You're taking your aggressions out on the streets. Well, do it on the wrestling mat. My brother said, I'll try it. So he did. And he became really good at it. His first year, he qualified for states. His second year, he was fifth in the nation.

He caught on very quickly. Fifth in the nation. Yeah, he got a scholarship to college. Unfortunately, he was already married, had a kid, and his wife got pregnant again. So he had to drop out of school and get a real job. But when he dropped out, he moved back home, which means Kurt Angle is going to be in trouble

because this guy is going to live his dreams through me. So I kind of picked up after where he left off. And that's how I became who I was because my brother Mark and my other brothers, Eric and Johnny and David, we all were wrestlers and we all took pride in that. And I just followed suit and you know i and i think the real reason why i became the most successful in my family is because i was the youngest i believe if it was switched around i was the oldest my oldest was the

youngest i think he'd be in my shoes right here today what how much older was was your brother? My oldest brother is 17 years older than me. 17, okay. My brother Mark was 14 years older. All right, so you had a nice spread there. They're almost like a father figure in a way too. Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah. But your dad was in your life too for a while there as well. Yeah, yeah.

I lost him my freshman year in high school. That was a tough situation for me. Losing your dad at that age is really tough. But, you know, my dad was a huge fan of me and my brothers. He never missed any of our sporting events. Even if the event was earlier in the day and he had to leave work early, he showed up. I loved him for that. So, you know, my dad was such an important person in my life.

And losing him was difficult. And I thought, who am I going to dedicate my athletic career to? And I said, you know what? I'm going to dedicate it to my father. I'm going to wrestle for my father. And the crazy thing is when I started wrestling, I wasn't good. I was getting my ass handed to me. Yeah.

And my brothers were like, this kid's a pussy. He's never going to pan out. You know, it's crazy because right when my dad died, the switch went off my head. And I became more focused and more determined. And I started setting goals for myself. And by my senior year in high school, I won a state championship in wrestling, something none of my brothers ever did. When did you start wrestling officially? I started a little bit when i was

eight eight nine years old but i would only do like a camp a day camp for a week uh at my local high school and then i would do two tournaments a year and i get my ass handed to me so it wasn't like full-time wrestling it's just like i was just getting the flavor of it you know because my brother was a wrestler but um i didn't start really wrestling until my seventh grade year. And I actually broke my arm that year, so I missed that year. So really, eighth grade is when I started. Wow. Where I was fully prone, you know, going full blow.

That's crazy because, like, a lot of great wrestlers I talk to who end up, you know, competing in college and stuff, these are guys who were on mats when they were, like, five. Yeah, you know what? And I get that. But what happens to those guys a lot of the time is by the time they're trying out for the Olympics, they hate the fucking sport. They hate it.

And my brothers were smart. They didn't force me when I was six, seven, eight years old to wrestle in tournaments every weekend and get like 100 wins a year and, you know, be that wrestler that has been wrestling since he was five years old. They realized it was a very tough sport and that I understood that me starting late was beneficial for me because by the time I got really good, I was in college.

And then after college, I had the Olympics. And I wasn't tired of the sport because I started in eighth grade. So I literally only had nine years experience before I tried out for the Olympic team. And yeah, so I didn't have a lot of experience. But knowing that I didn't burn out from wrestling, like a lot of athletes do who start at five, six years old. I started in eighth grade and I was at my peak when I went to the Olympics.

You know, my nephew, Marky, I'll give you an example. He was way better than me. He actually should have won an Olympic gold medal, but he burned out. He started when he was five. He averaged 100 matches a year for 17 years, and by the time he was done, he despised the sport. A hundred matches a year.

Yeah, and he was ranked number one in the nation three years in a row in college. And he got hobbled with injuries, so he placed third three years in a row. But he was expected to win all those years. And then the next year was the Olympic trials, and he was like, I'm not doing it. I'm like, Marky, you got to do it.

He said, I hate wrestling. Iy you got to do it he said i i hate wrestling i don't want to do it anymore i was like wow he's like uncle kurt i've been doing it since i was five okay that's understandable if you're if you're tired of it you don't like it anymore but you're you're so gifted you you should be trying out for your olympic team because you're that good he actually beat the olympic medalist 15-0 in a match. In college? Yes, yes. Wow.

So he was that good, yes. I mean, part of it also is you look at today's times with social media. One of the really sad things I see is like when parents are living vicariously through their kids, and you name the sport, it doesn't have to be wrestling. It can be any of these sports. You'll see them pushing their kids to like be in the NFL at age five or at the NBA at age seven. And I'm just looking at it like, you know, they're, they're gonna, it's just natural that they're going to develop a hatred for something that's supposed to be such a release. Well, I'll be honest with you.

My nephew's dad, my brother Mark, he was really tough on Marky. And that kind of plagued the relationship for a little while, because he was really hard on him, and he really forced him to do a lot more than he wanted to. And unfortunately, it ruffled some feathers and they didn't have that great of a relationship. But now, you know, after, you know, 15 years, 15 years later, they're good with each other.

But for a while there, you know, they were, you know, it was hard for them to talk. That's a shame. And it's because he was really rough on them. Yeah. Yeah. And that happens quite a bit, especially in wrestling. A lot of parents do that.

And they want to live vicariously through their kids. And they're forcing them to do these tournaments. And they want them to win every single time. It's just you have to. Not you want to. You have to. Yeah. I'm not a parent yet.

But that's definitely not something I want to do. I will want my kids to do things because they want to do them. That doesn't mean you let them get off with low effort or things like that. There's a line there, but if they want to do something, put your heart and soul into it, but do it because you're about it, not because I'm about it and I love it. Well, my daughter, Nicoletta, she's seven years old. She's wrestling. She's wrestling. She's wrestling? Yes.

But I don't coach her. Really? I sit in a corner and watch her being coached by other coaches. You bite your fucking... I want to be in there, but I don't want that relationship with her where she's like, fuck, my dad's all over me. I don't want that to happen. I want to be there to console her. If she gets hurt, I want to be there to kiss her all over me. I don't want that to happen. I want to be there to console her.

If she gets hurt, I want to be there to kiss her boo-boo. I don't want to be the one that's like, you got to keep going. I don't want to do that to my kids. I don't want to have that type of relationship with them. So I let other coaches coach my kids. Can you imagine being a peewee wrestling coach and you're trying to coach a kid and you're like, oh, your dad's fucking Kurt Angle standing over there.

I need you to get on top. You know what? It just happened. You know, it's happened a couple times. Same exact thing, yes. Did your dad coach you at all? Yeah. He was a football player.

He played football for the Army. He was in the Army. Played football for the Army? Yeah, yeah. I didn't even know they had a team. Well, not the college. I know, but you said for the Army. He was in the Army. Played football for the Army? Yeah, yeah. I didn't even know they had a team. Well, not the college. I know, but you said for the Army. Legitimately the Army.

They had teams back then. And my dad was a fullback. So he loved football. And he was in the Army for four years, and then he was in the Reserves for 33. But he really loved football. So that was my first love for 33 but um he he really loved football so that that was my first love you know because of my dad i loved football and uh i was really good at it and i i had a really great uh high school career where i was all state and i was a defensive player of the year for pennsylvania so i i had a lot of accomplishments in football. But the problem was when it came time to go to college, no college has wanted me.

Why not? Probably because I ran a 4'8 and I was 5'11". I don't know. You ran a 4'8 even though you run six miles in 35 minutes? Yeah, yeah. What's going on here? Hey, I got the white man's disease, man. That's all I can say.

But yeah, so my father, you know, he loved me, watching me play football. But, you know, not being able to go to having a college recruit me, I had scholarship offers. I'm not going to lie to you. I had scholarship offers to North Carolina State, North Carolina, Tulsa, but nothing close by. I always want to stay close to home. So I remember at one point in time, I was so arrogant. I was like, hey, coach. I was telling my high school coach,

coach, don't pull me out of class unless Penn State comes or Ohio State. Meanwhile, they never showed up. And if it's not Joe Pott, don't bother. Yeah, exactly. So I learned quickly that, you know, these big major colleges didn't want me. So, you know, I had this incredible senior year in wrestling. And that's when I decided, you know what, my route is wrestling.

I'm going to go wrestling. And, you know, I wanted to stay in their home. I had, I got a lot of, uh, I got recruited very, very heavily for wrestling. Um, even though I never won States before my senior year, I had colleges offered me full rides, Oklahoma state, the best college in the nation back then for wrestling, Arizona state, uh, Iowa state. Um, so all these schools are offering me scholarships and I never won a state title. And usually, you know, the four-time state champions are the ones that go to those big colleges. But I wasn't even a one-time state champion.

But what they did is they watched tape of me, and they saw that I was raw. I had raw talent, and that they knew that I was going to be something special. So I ended up going. I wanted to stay close to home, so I ended up going to be something special. So I ended up going. I wanted to stay close to home, so I ended up going to a small college called Clarion University. Where is that? It's right outside of Pittsburgh, an hour and a half outside of Pittsburgh.

It's in western Pennsylvania. Yes, yes. So I went there, and the reason why I went there is because the year before, they were undefeated. They're a small school, but they actually beat Penn State and Oklahoma State in a dole meet. And they had eight guys that were expected to be All-Americans that year. And when they got to the Nationals, they were a dark horse to win the Nationals, this little tiny school, Clarion.

And not one fucking wrestler placed. They all shit the bed that weekend. My coach was so depressed. He didn't leave his room for three days. He sat there in the dark. So the next year was my year when I came in and it was like a recuperating year though, because all the seniors graduated and there was like nine seniors on the team so that we had like a we had

to restart you know the program but um so i was uh i was the top guy i actually won wrestler of the year for my team my freshman year uh i won the ewl title the the national qualifiers i was expected to place as an all-american and i ended up losing the first round of the Nationals. So my first year, I didn't fare very well. I didn't place at the Nationals. But my last three years, I won two national titles and was runner-up one year. So I had a really good college career. And Clarion, although it's a small school, is still a Division I school. They wrestled against Division I teams.

What was your coach's name again? Coach Bob Bubb was my college coach. He was an important guy in your life. Yes, he was. Yes, he was. He was a father figure. All my college, my high school coach, my college coach, my Olympic coach is Dave Schultz.

He was a father figure to me. Yeah, so Coach Bubb was really important. He was very crucial. He was a Christian man man very honest very up front and uh he taught me a lot about you know a lot of life lessons but most of all he taught me how to be the best wrestler i could possibly be you know he guaranteed me if i came to his college he would take care of me and he did when was the first time you remember the the literal goal being in your head of i want to be an olympic gold medalist did that happen before college even yeah yeah it did i um when i was little when i was

six seven years old my brother mark was wrestling obviously so wrestling was really hot in our family and i used to like pretend that I was training and the Russians were watching. The Soviets. Yeah. They were spying on me. I mean, I was, I was out of my mind, but, you know, so I pretend I was training and, you know, the Russians were, you know, spying on me because I was the, I was the man that was going to win the Olympic gold medal and they were trying to learn from me. But it was always a dream of mine. And I didn't know it was going to be possible until I won my second national title in college. And that was my senior year at Clarion University. And I realized, you know what, I have the ability to go to the next level. And you know what I did? And I didn't fare very well. I lost a lot.

My 1993, 94, my first two years trying out for the Olympics or the world team or the Olympic team, because Olympics is every four years. Yes. 92 to 96 to 2000. And the world championships are in between. So 93, 94, 95 are the world championships. 96 is the Olympics. 97, 98 and nine is the world championships are in between. So 93, 94, 95 are the world championships. 96 is the Olympics. 97, 98, and 9 is the world's. 2000 is the Olympics. So you were a little too late to go for Barcelona in 92, right? Right, right.

You were still in college? Yes, yes. So I tried out, and I wasn't doing that well. Two wrestlers were beating me consistently, and you might know them. One is Mark Kerr who's coming out with a movie called Smashing Machine I think the rock Dwayne Johnson is playing Mark

in the movie and then Mark Coleman who was a UFC champion he was from Ohio State those two guys were beating me consistently and you know what I decided to quit after the 1994 season I figured I'm never going to beat these guys. So why even try? You quit? Yeah, I quit for about five months.

But every day it was, my conscience was getting to me saying, what if you could have made the team? You're never going to know unless you see it through to the end. You're going to regret it if you don't try. So I came back and I came back with a game plan. I did exhaust training. That's the training I did. That's when you train until you're exhausted and that's when training actually begins. Yeah, it's almost a form of torture. And I learned this from a lot of successful wrestlers in college like Dan Gable from Iowa, the coach for Iowa, the old coach. But I wasn't the biggest or the fastest or the strongest or the most technical or the best wrestler in my weight class.

But what I knew I could be is the most well-conditioned. I would wear my opponents down on scoring them once I got tired. And it worked extremely well because in 95 and 96, I went undefeated. And I won the Worlds in 95 and the Olympics in 96. It probably surprises people to hear that towards the beginning of your story here, you technically like quit for, for several months. When you look at the rest of your story all the way to today and all the trials and tribulations you've been through and the great successes and stuff like that was the thing about you. You never quit. You like almost stupidly never quit sometimes at some point we'll get there. But I mean that as a compliment. But like, you know, was that when people talk about like the origin story and the moment where, you know, you fucking like Kobe used to talk about the gladiator scenes where Maximus Desmus Radius would just go down, touch the sand and stand up and be like, all right, motherfuckers, it's on.

Like, is that where that happened in those five months where you just suddenly got to that point where you're like, I don't have my purpose. I really want to do this. And I'm selling myself short. I can go fucking do this. Yes, yes. I felt like something was missing. Like, every day I was like, I can't keep doing this. I was in denial.

I was afraid to see if I could succeed because I wasn't succeeding. So when you have that fear of knowing that you're not the best and you're probably gonna get beat, it wears on you. And then after a while, it becomes you. And you become that person that is okay

with second, third, fourth place. And I didn't wanna be that person. So when I quit, the feelings got to me. I started getting guilt feelings. And it was like, you know what? You haven't finished what you started. You have to finish. So it was my conscious saying, listen, wake up, get back there,

get back to training and do what you do best. You know, go out there and perform as a wrestler. And, you know, see it through to the end. And I did that. Do what you do best. Go out there and perform as a wrestler. And see it through to the end. And I did that. And I was really happy I did because the result was an Olympic gold medal. Oh, yeah. Where were you living during those five months?

Back home? Yeah, my mom. Yeah, my mother was crucial for my training. She pretty much took care pretty much, you know, took care of me, you know, fed me, uh, uh, she washed my clothes. I was always coming into the, to her condo, grabbing something and leaving to go to my next session. So I'd see, I'd pass by her and she gave me a protein drink and yeah, and I give her the dirty laundry and, and I grabbed my other stuff that I needed for my next workout. So, uh, it was like a relationship that we, we were functioning at a high level. She was on board with me and we

were like a team doing whatever we needed to do to get things done. And, uh, she was my biggest cheerleader. She's the one that really, really helped me out the most. And, uh, you know, she even managed me. She, you know, she raised money for me. She, uh, put on spaghetti dinner, dinner fundraisers. And, uh, you know, she, uh, she actually got me a sponsor, a local sponsor from Pittsburgh to help me out. So I didn't have to, uh, work for a living that I was able to train full time. So my mom was so important and so crucial in my career. And that's why after i won the gold medal medal i put it right around her neck i gave it to her said cheers mom she deserves it yeah

i would imagine because your dad died pretty suddenly when you were yes yeah he he died in a construction accident he uh he fell 13 feet off of a crane, landed on his head. And he was such a tough son of a bitch. He got up and his skull was cracked in two places. And he had two broken shoulders. And he got up and he was disoriented. And the guy, the boss said, hey, you need to go to the hospital. Let me take you to the hospital. My dad said, no, I'll walk.

So my dad walks to the hospital. Let me take you to the hospital. My dad said, no, I'll walk. So my dad walks to the hospital. And when he gets there, we find out that he's in intensive care and his brain's swelled up. And then he went into a coma. And once he went into a coma, he ended up going brain dead. So we had him on life support and my mom had to make a decision. Do we keep him on and take him off? Do we leave him on and make him look like a vegetable rest of his life or take him off like support? So it was really emotional time. My mother, you know, she was like, Dave, please come back. Just please come back right now. I'm begging you. She was crying. And it was like, man, this is brutal. But my dad passed away, and it was a really difficult time for me. But like I said before, I dedicated my athletic career to my father.

Yeah. I would imagine it seems like your parents also had a really good marriage. You know what? They did and they didn't. They got along, but they didn't sleep in the same room. I'm not sure what occurred, you know, because they had six kids. And, you know, so obviously they were active to a certain point in time. But for some reason, you know, my dad, you know what?

It might have been because our house was so damn small. My brother Eric and I had to sleep in my parents' bed too. Oh, you did? Yeah. We didn't have any room. So I slept in my parents' bed until I was 12. Then when my brothers moved out, I got a room. So I think my dad was just like, fuck this. I'm not going to deal with my two kids sleeping with my wife. So he slept on the couch every night. And you know what? My dad, as good of a fan as he was to us and as hard as he worked, he was a functional alcoholic. I didn't spend a lot of time with my father because when he was home and he wasn't home very often, he was drinking. So he would wake up in the morning,

drink two glasses of rum before he went to work. And then he'd go to work, and at lunch, he'd end up going to the club and drinking a few glasses of rum there. Then he'd go back to work, and then after work, he'd go back to the club, drink a few glasses of rum, go home, eat dinner, drink a couple glasses of rum, go. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz. Make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals.

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Go to bed, sleep for three hours, wake up in the middle of the night, drink two glasses of rum, and then wake up in the morning and start all over again. So he was very functional, but we didn't get a lot of time to talk because he worked the whole time, and then after dinner, he passed out,

and we didn't have any time at night to talk to him. Then he woke up in the morning. He was gone before we got up for school. So, you know, I didn't get a lot of time with my dad. But, you know, he was the breadwinner and he was taking care of us. And he never missed any of our sporting events. So that's what mattered to me. Right.

So he made it out, like he made it to the things you cared about. But when you weren't on, so to speak, you didn't really have a chance to develop the relationship. Right. Right. Exactly. I don't know. I've never heard one like that. That's interesting.

It was a little different. Yeah. Yeah. A little different. But he was obviously, like you said, an extremely important person in your life. Yes, he was. Yes, he was. And he'd be very proud of everything you've accomplished.

You know what? It's funny because my brother Mark isn't afraid of anybody. Okay. My brother Mark has fought probably 600 times in his life, always fighting. He never lost a fight. A Pittsburgh guy fighting? Yeah, exactly. But he was afraid of my dad.

That's the only person he wouldn't mess with. And it's the only person he wouldn't mess with. And he's, it's the only person he would back down to. And I don't know if he just, in his mind, it was like, this is my dad and I should respect him. Or if my dad was really that much of a badass.

I don't know. But he was afraid of my dad. Yeah. Yeah. Something in the gene pool got into you guys for sure. So maybe that came from him, but it also seems like your mom was a real tough lady too. She was, she was. And she was tough by trial and error.

You know, she had five boys. So, you know, she had to deal with that. And she had one girl and, you know, my sister Leanne, she got pregnant when she was 14 years old and yeah, she had a kid at 15. And, uh, so, you know, that was my mom's only girl and, you know, she had to grow up pretty quickly. So all she had really were, cause my sister Leanne then got married, you know, they, they, she actually got married to the person that impregnated her at 15. Yeah. That lasted like six months. And, but my, my mom thought she was gone, so she had to deal with five boys.

Yeah, that's a lot. Four of them that got in trouble all the time. One of them that didn't. One of them that I didn't. And you know what? What's crazy is my dad always told my brothers, stop doing what you're doing. If you can't stop, don't let Kurt do it.

He's the one that's going to carry the family legacy. That's what he told my brothers. And my brothers are the ones that told me that. And so they always protected me. They shielded me from anything they were doing, whether it was drugs or fighting or whatever it was. I mean, there was a point in time where my brothers did a shakedown. I was in the car, and they went into a house with a gun.

And I don't know if they grabbed money or drugs, but I was like, what the hell is going on here? So there were a lot of crazy things that occurred. Oh, gosh, I was about eight or nine. You know what? This is going to be in my movie. I don't know if I told you, but I have a movie coming out. You've got a movie coming out? Yeah, about my life story, about my life career.

And Ian and Esham Nelms are the directors. They're really talented. They did movies like Fat Man starring Mel Gibson and Red Right Hand starring Orlando Bloom. Yeah. They're very talented. And they also wrestled in high school and college. Oh, so they get it. So they understand my sport.

They get it. And they wanted to do this movie about me. And they're almost done with the script of the writers and the directors. And it's a movie about me, a kid that was growing up in the streets of Pittsburgh and that overcame all these obstacles and over and overcame all these obstacles, especially with a broken neck when a gold medal in the Olympics. And it's just, you know, this movie is going to have a little bit of everything like it's going to have that rocky feel to it. Maybe a little bit of the fighter and, you know, mixed in with iron claw, but it's going to tell a good message. I'm really excited about this.

I'm actually going to help the directors. I'll be behind the scenes for the first time. So it'd be a lot of fun. I'll be on set every day and I'm going to have a blast doing this. I'm in for that. I can't wait for the world to see it. Yeah. You have,

there's, you know, people like when people look up to like heroes, like larger than life people, which let's call it what it is, especially when you're great at a sport or something like in culture, that's, you know, that can be a responsibility because you got kids who want to be you. Right, right. You certainly were and continue to be that for so many kids and people are now even grown up who grew up idolizing you but like when when when you see this people want people that they can relate to doesn't mean they're like their life experiences are the exact same or something like that everyone's got their own things but you know we live in this world now where motherfuckers put up pictures on instagram to make their life

look so perfect or whatever and they're basically out there screaming, I'm not like you. I'm not like you. I'm different. I'm better. I do too. Right. But here's the thing. We may all show the highlights of what we have, but at the end of the day, you're a public guy. Your story's out there. People see what you've gone through and we'll get to all of it today. And they see where you've been at the highest of the highest mountains and at the lowest of the lowest valleys and have found a way to come back. So when it comes to like making, I mean, you already made a great documentary, but like making a movie, it's actually something that's true. Unlike Rocky, which is a fictionalized story. I think people will really fuck with that.

Not just because like you're famous, but because there's something in there where there's lessons that they can take away and apply to their own life you're absolutely right and i i think we're going to be able to teach a lot of lessons in this film uh and uh i'm i'm really excited about doing this like i i never dreamed in a million years that someone would be interested in doing a movie about my life story you know when you're growing up and you're living it you don't think your life is special at all you know and then you find out oh man maybe it was kind of intriguing, you know, to have. Because I didn't they didn't they weren't the only directors that approached me after my documentary came out. Oh, I bet a lot. A lot of people came. Yeah. Yeah. And I was drawn to Ian Esham because they were former wrestlers.

Yes. And they they're they're upcoming, incredible upcoming directors. They've done a lot of great movies and they they're they're upcoming incredible upcoming directors they've done a lot of great movies and they continue to do incredible movies and uh just to be a part of their team is just really cool yeah yeah how are you doing in that chair by the way oh i'm good i'm good this is actually comfortable yeah all right good i just want to make sure we're going to talk about all your neck injuries today but i see you moving back and forth but yeah so when are they looking to like start making that like film it uh well right now we're in the development stages uh we almost got the script done we uh we'll be getting investors uh which shouldn't be a problem um then uh we'll start picking the cast great so i'd imagine we'll probably start shooting in about a year and uh i know they want the movie to um

be released before the 2028 olympics oh great so that'd be awesome like in the build-up to that yes that'd be so cool are you where are the 2028 olympics uh they are in los angeles i was gonna say it's in the u.s right yeah and our usa wrestling team we might have our best olympic team of all time. Who's the notables? Well, Jordan Burrows is still in there. David Taylor's doing a really good job. James Green, some of the girls, Macy Kitty, Kylie Welker, Ariana Velascusa.

There are a lot of great wrestlers. The thing is, my 96 team was considered the greatest Olympic team of all time. But the wrestlers today, we had 10 weight classes back then. Now they only have six. We own. So it's almost cut in half. And that means you only have six spots to make the Olympic team. It's almost impossible these days.

And these wrestlers that are making the teams are just unbelievable. So, you know, I'll give you an example. The women's wrestling teams at the last Olympics, they won four medals. They crushed it. And the men's team won three medals. They did pretty well too. But this next Olympics is going to be incredible. But I just want to tell you that I'm actually an ambassador for USA. I was just going to ask. So are you involved officially then?

Yeah. I'm helping them raise money for their athletes. You know, uh, one thing I wanted to tell you guys is the, these athletes, they don't, they're not able to, uh, their government doesn't pay them to wrestle and compete um or perform train and compete uh i'll give you an example countries like russia china and many other countries their governments pay their athletes their olympic athletes to train and compete full time yeah a little bit of that too but they they pay their athletes to train and compete full time so they don't have to get jobs. In the United States, we don't have that luxury. Our athletes, for the most part, have to get jobs while they're training.

So they have to train around their work schedule, which is ridiculous. So I'm here to raise money for USA Wrestling so that these athletes have the opportunity to train full-time and compete full-time, just like the other countries in the world. I think that's so important. And if I can mention a link, go to KurtEngle.org. That's KurtEngle.org. You go there and you can donate to the USA Wrestling Team. It will be very much appreciated. The crazy thing is when I was training for the Olympics in 95 and 96, I was able to raise money.

I raised money. I put on spaghetti fundraiser dinners, and I had sponsors that stepped up for me. I sold autographed T-shirts, autographed photos. And I was very blessed. I didn't have to work for a living. I was able to make ends meet, and the result is I won an Olympic gold medal. Yeah. So not having a job gave me that much of an advantage.

And I don't want these athletes today to have to work for a living and train on the side. You know, it's crazy. I had no idea about that. Yeah. So, you know, these athletes deserve better. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you.

So we're going gonna have this link you see on the screen that you just mentioned we're gonna have this in the description but people can see it on our screen right now awesome awesome so yeah so you can just don't you basically like a one-click donation right there if you want to support that yeah so anybody who wants to support the usa wrestling team would be very much appreciated these guys work their butts off and we could have very well our best Olympic team of all time at the next Olympics. So I'm really

excited about the future of USA Wrestling. Especially me being part of it now. Yeah, so as an ambassador, are you going to be involved in any coaching or anything too? You know what? They want me to go to the World Championships and to the Olympics. Will I be able to teach technique?

Maybe, maybe not. I have been on the wrestle mat in a few years, but I think the old man has a little bit left in his tank. I think you got something. You still built like a shithouse over there. Well, you know what? The reason why I'm in decent shape right now is because I have my knees replaced. You got your knees replaced?

Yeah. Like the full metal knee? Yes, yes. Yeah, my doctor told me that he said, listen, you are going to have these knees for 20 years, and then you're going to have to get new ones. He said, but if you abuse them, they'll only last 10 years. So if you're overweight, you're abusing your knees. Now, if you run on the streets like you're not supposed to,

you're gonna ruin your knees and you're gonna have to get knee replacements earlier. You don't wanna do that. You wanna wait 20 years. So I decided that I was gonna diet really well and do as much training as I could. I don't do a lot of weight training because I have to have two shoulder replacements.

Yeah, my body's so banged up. I had a back surgery, four neck surgeries, my knee surgeries. Now I have shoulder replacements. So I'm going to get that done eventually. Did you dislocate both of them? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Oh gosh, that's a scar. I need another one right there, but not, not a replacement. That's a scar, man. Yeah. I need another one right there, but not a replacement. You know what, though? I have heard that people who get that done, the rehab's brutal, but life changer. Yeah. Life changer.

That's what I was told, too. They said the rehab is really difficult, but it's going to make a huge difference. And they also said you're not going to have full mobility of your shoulder. No, you don't get that. Yeah, but you're going to be able to function with it yeah and that's good enough for me as long as the pain goes right yeah right once you dislocate your shoulder once like you're never doing like hanging pull-ups and shit like that again it's just how it is you know i think i took this one out like 16 times so oh god wow it's been a little journey right there, but we're doing okay. So anyway, back in, we were

talking about back in like 94, when you stepped aside for like five months and your mom was, obviously you were around her and she was pushing you to get back in. I would imagine your brothers were kind of pushing you too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were pushing. They kept saying, when are you going to start back? And know, and it got to me because, you know, they were reminding me, making me feel guilty, you know? Right. And it worked. I'm not going to lie to you. Especially my brother, Eric. He's the one that's only a year older than me. He's the one that beat my ass my whole entire life. He's the one that I always compared myself to. And because of him, I became that much better. Because he was always just a little bit better than me.

And I was always chasing him. And so eventually I got better than him. And then I started beating him. And, you know, he was, then he got kind of pissed off. You know, because he enjoyed beating my ass. So, but having a brother like that, you know, it really makes you realize how blessed you are to be able to come from a family that was so driven by sports and something that, you know, that, that they loved as a family and what they, what they love to do as a family.

And that was going to sporting events and, you know, watch your kids compete. And that's what I do now. I have daughters that do gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, and that's all we do is we go to their sporting events. But you know what? I don't coach. And that's great. I stay back. I stay far away.

All I have to do is kiss their boo-boos and tell them I love them and they did a really good job, and that's about it. But that's cool because you're doing what you loved your dad doing for you and continuing that so they know you're present. That's really awesome. But when you were in those five months, did you totally shut down training completely? You didn't even go to the gym or anything?

I felt sorry for myself. I was gloomy. I was like, man, why can't I beat these guys? And the thing was, I knew I couldn't beat them. They were having me stand toe to toe with them. So I got this bad habit of wanting to react to whatever they did. So when I would tie up with them, I would just sit there and push and pull instead of moving around and faking and bobbing

and trying to get them off balance. And with that comes conditioning because when you're moving a lot, you get tired quicker. So when I got these guys moving and they weren't moving where they wanted to and it was uncomfortable for them, they were starting to get more tired, more tired, and more tired. Eventually, I'd wear them down.

Then that's when I'd be able to score on them. When I was first competing against them, I was just standing toe-to-toe. I was doing what they wanted me to do. But after a while, I realized, you know what? I've got to pick the pace up. If I do that, I think I'll break these guys. And I did. I remember Mark Kerr and he's one of the baddest dudes on the planet.

Okay. I remember one point in time, I head-botted him by accident during the trials and his tooth popped out, went on the floor and he picks up the tooth and he goes, ref, how much more of this am I going to have to take? I was like, oh, man, this kid cracked. I got him. I know I have him now.

He's actually complaining about his tooth. Yeah, I knew. I said, I cracked this guy. Yeah. So you just come, you lost your purpose. And now you get back in and you're like, I got it back. This is what I'm meant to do. lost your purpose and now you get back in and you're like, I got it back. This, this, this is what I'm meant to do. It's almost like, you know, you can look at that glass half full instead of

half empty. It's like, you feel like maybe you quit on yourself for a minute, but in a way you, you needed that to like mentally clear your head and make the plan. You know what? I never took a break from wrestling ever since high school. So every year, and like you said, I did try out for the 92 Olympics. I did. You said before. Yeah, yeah. But I knew I wasn't going to make it. You're still in college though, right?

Yeah, yeah. I actually took third. I was a second alternate. But even in 88, when I was a freshman in college, I tried out. Really? I played seventh. in college, I tried out. Really? I placed seventh. I did pretty well. But, you know, I never took a break.

That's a problem. Ever since high school, I wrestled year-round. And I did freestyle in the summer and folk style in the fall, spring, winter, and spring. So I never took any time off. Right. And that five months was my first time that I took any kind of time off. And it felt kind of good. I mean, I also felt guilty. I was like, you know,

I should be back there training. There's no reason for me not to train. But so I think deep down, I knew that I was going to go back. I just needed like a reason to. And that's when I, when I found out about exhaust training did you get did you have a relationship with dave schultz yet at this time uh yeah let me see yes i did in college yes yes i did um dave was uh wrestling for foxcatcher and uh when i was uh junior in college john dupont recruited me and brought me on the farm and i had a meeting with John to be on the team. And Dave Schultz was present as well. He was the coach.

So, you know, John brought me into his award room and, you know, he was showing me all his awards from, he was an equestrian, I guess. And so he was showing me the awards and, you know, he pointed at a wrestler up on the wall, and he said, that's Mark Schultz. That's Dave's brother, and that's going to be you one day. And I thought, you know what, he probably tells everybody, you know,

all the wrestlers that come in that, you know, they're going to join the club. He probably says that to all of them. But meeting Dave was interesting. Wow, this guy was so intelligent. He knew seven different languages because he wanted to learn technique from other countries. The guy was a ball of information. I mean, his technique was by far the best in the world. He knew techniques from everywhere.

And he taught a lot of it. And I learned a lot from Dave. And he was the reason why I made the Olympic team. And, you know, what sucked is the last six months of my career, I didn't have Dave because he was dead. He got killed six months before the Olympics. So I didn't have an Olympic coach. And Dave was my coach.

But Dave taught me enough to know what I had to do from here on in. So I was good. I knew at that point in time I could take care of myself. Yeah. Now, for people out there who, and we got Lauren in the studio finally. It's good to see you. Thanks so much for making this happen. Oh, I'm so happy.

Yeah, so we're like 50 minutes in right now. We'll just keep rolling. We'll probably take a break in a few just to go to the bathroom. But anyway, so the movie fox catcher in 2014 i believe it was steve carell mark ruffalo channing tatum was in there i think too but that's based on this whole thing it's it's an amazing movie it's also obviously very chilling because as you alluded to it has a dark end but you know essentially people can read the wikipedia on it but john dupont murdered yes dave schultz in broad daylight and in front of his wife and john dupont is obviously

an heir to the dupont family which has a fuck ton of money so he kind of inherited it he was a billionaire yeah right so he has this he has this estate in newtown square just outside philadelphia called foxcatcher and he as you explained like he has he had his own team of wrestlers he was obsessed with wrestling so he would have guys like dave schultz who might be the greatest wrestler to ever live they're coaching and. And then he'd want to bring on young guys like you as well to get in there and work. But, you know, I think people are maybe almost eerily fascinated by those years, like when guys like you were coming up and training there because they know what the ending was. But when you first, it sounds like you kind of went there very shortly after this five month period that you took off.

No. No? No? This was, I went there two years before the five-month period. Oh, you were there for- I was a Foxcatcher for two years. Whoa, I didn't know that. And I wasn't making a team.

Okay. And the thing is that my opponents that I was talking about, Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman, they were also on Team Foxcatcher. So all three of us were part of that team. So you could have more than one guy in each weight class a part of the club. So he just picked the best of the best. Were you living on the estate at that time? Six months a year, yes. What about the other six months?

I'd be living at home. What I would do is I would go there six months, train at Foxcatcher. I would stay at a house next to Dave Schultz's house. And then the other six months, I'd be at home, and I would train at Edinburgh with Bruce Baumgardner, who was a four-time Olympic medalist. Guys like that. So I had a lot of other wrestlers in the Pittsburgh area that I was able to train with.

So I was traveling back and forth, Foxcatcher home, Foxcatcher home. I would stay at Foxcatcher for a month and come home for a month and then go back to Foxcatcher for a month. So I would rotate months. And that's like right after college, basically, right? Yes, and sometimes in college,

my coach would say, go down to Foxcatcher and train. Go to Foxcatcher. Because he knew I'd get better training partners down there how many wrestlers would they have there at a time training oh gosh uh well i'd imagine they had probably had about 40 members so probably 25 yeah that were full-time and the best of the best effectively yeah the best of the best they always were yeah that you know what they won the national title every year uh that fox catcher was uh valid you know wow yeah fox catcher always won the

nationals and dave while you were there dave was always there too right yes mark was there at first and mark left because he got freaked out about john dupont and d Dave came on board right after Mark was there. And so what's crazy is Mark told Dave, don't go there. And Dave was like, it's the best for my family. And definitely, I mean, Dave was getting paid a ton of money to coach everybody. And his family got a beautiful house on the farm. And it was just a great situation for him and unfortunately it backfired on him right now did you develop a really close relationship with him right away working yes yes you know i remember my first day there i was really nervous and dave was like hey kurt come train with me so i thought oh god this guy's under 60 pounds i'm gonna whip his ass. Because I weighed 210. I was 50 pounds heavier. And he beat the shit

out of me. I mean, he was doing some crazy two-on-one things where I'd be like trying to get away from him because he was tying me up. And I was like, this is crazy. He was using technique on me that I didn't know about.

And it was really frustrating me. But he was really good at that. He frustrated a lot of athletes. That's how he won. So he was that good, though. He wasn't just a great athlete. He was a tough SOB. You could tell that if he ever got in a fight, he was always going to win.

Dave was that tough. What did he... Did you have a conversation with him when you stepped aside, when you decided to step aside for what ended up being five months? Yes, yes. And Dave was like a free spirit kind of guy. He was like, listen, you got to find yourself. You know, he wasn't like, get back here.

It was like, you know, hey, Kurt, do your thing. You know, just think about it. You might want to reconsider and come back, and I'll be waiting for you. Oh, wow. So it was more of a fatherly figure kind of advice. Yeah, supportive, yeah. So you had been there two years before you went in the five months, and you go back there. I go back, and I start the exhaust training.

See, the exhaust training didn't happen at Foxcatcher. That happened at my house. That's where I did all the training. Now, at Foxcatcher, I would do it, but they weren't the ones that were telling me to do it. I was doing it on the side. On the side. Yeah, I was doing their training plus the exhaust training. Wait a minute.

So we're going to rehash this because we talked about the training at the beginning, but I want to see how it compares with Foxcatcher. Without getting into your exhaustive training, what was foxcatcher's schedule every day foxcatcher uh go to the gym lift weights in the morning for an hour um the afternoon you would have technique for an hour then live wrestling for an hour and then the evening uh maybe you go on the airdyne and rode the airdyne or ran on the treadmill or ran across or along outside on the farm, all over the farm. But, uh, it was probably four or five hours of training. So you would add in your own five, six hours. My own five hours.

Yeah. Yeah. Did any other wrestlers do that? No, no. I was, I was the only one. All right. Now back, now back to this schedule. Cause it's just fascinating to me.

Okay. You said this right at the beginning. So in the morning, you're doing your six-mile run in 36 minutes. You're carrying a poor soul up a hill. It's got to be carried by you. 200-yard hill sprints, yeah. How many? 20.

100-yard hill. Are we talking like a 30-degree hill? Steep. Pittsburgh's really steep. It's like mountains. It's like climbing a mountain. There was one famous hill that's in Mount Washington above the city that's really steep. I used to hit that all the time. Who would you usually be carrying?

My manager. His name was Jimmy Perry. He passed away a couple years ago, but he was my manager back then. How much older was he than you? He was my age. He was your age. Okay. I'm thinking you got like fucking Nick up there like, come on, kid, go. No, he was actually my manager manager, like business manager, but he had to train with me.

That sucks. Yeah. Poor guy. It did suck for him. So every day he's just being carried up a hill by another man. It's not how I think of business management, but okay. So you would do those two things. What was the third thing you'd do in the morning for cardio?

I would do the airdyne where I would sprint for a minute. That's the. Jog for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So I do that for an hour. Yeah. So that was pretty much my morning workout.

But afternoon I would do two hours of live wrestling, an hour um yeah so that that was pretty much my morning workout but uh afternoon i would do two hours of live wrestling an hour of technique i do an hour of conditioning again uh then uh the evening i would do my weight strength training and plyometrics isometrics um what kinds of things core training um uh like uh having 60pound dumbbells and jumping up on a bench and down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Sounds great. That's plyometrics. That's some hard stuff. Yeah.

But I would do stuff like that. So I really pushed my body to the limit. But my recuperation time, like I said, wasn't that long. Crazy. Yeah. What was your diet like? My diet, I had to consume 6, 000 calories a day because it seems a lot for me it was a pain in the ass it seemed like a lot i i i always ate pretty good so 6 000 calories is really hard to get into your body

uh you know when you're drinking a protein shake, that's 200, 300 calories, you know, so getting 6,000 in there, it's really difficult, but I was able to do it. Um, what would you, what would you eat? Like what were your go-tos? Okay. I would, I would literally, I would make a, in the morning I would make a tuna shake where, uh, I would put tuna in there, white tuna into a blender. Yeah. That sounds disgusting. I put milk and then i

put protein powder and then i put peanut butter and then i'd mix it up it'd be about a thousand calories and i would chug that thing and it was disgusting but i i couldn't if i didn't do that i wouldn't be able to get the calories the problem was i weighed about 204 pounds and I was wrestling at 220. So I was already underweight. So I had to keep my weight up. And since I was training so many hours a day, I had to up my calories to 6,000. And so that was a toll in itself. And I had to be careful because if I felt too full when I was training,

I was probably going to throw up. So it was a really difficult thing for me to do is balance those two. You couldn't like have the tuna separate. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy

$0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. No, I get it all done at once. Time consumption. Yeah, and then I'd have a Metarex shake after that. Then I would eat a baked potato with two chicken breasts. Is that lunch? Yep. And then I would have dinner.

I would have a steak with steamed vegetables. It was really hard for me to get all those calories in, but I did it. I did it somehow. And the crazy thing is I wasn't gaining any weight and I wasn't losing any weight. I was staying at 204. You're training 10 hours a day. Of course you're not gaining weight.

I know, I know. This is called science. I know, I know. I just wish I could have weighed 220. Thing is, I could have went down to 198. Yeah, probably. But why? Why? I didn't have to. I was still winning weighed 220. Thing is, I could have went down to 198. Yeah, probably. But why? Why?

I didn't have to. I was still winning at 220. And that's, is that heavyweight at 220? 220 is heavyweight. 286 is super heavyweight. Yeah. So there was one weight class above me. All right.

And I would imagine there's kind of, you know, people love heavyweight. Like there's a little bit of a draw to that. It sounds better. It sounds better. Right. But it doesn't always mean they're better. No, no, it doesn't. It's just the marketing. You gotta worry about that. But so you're doing that, as you said, like 28 and a half days a month or something like that, 10 hours a day, you get your body to recovery. You know, obviously there's some genetics there. I think a lot of it is also trained. Like you, you know, you build those calluses on yourself. Like it's very clear you did that. But I got to think you probably were more sore and more bent out than you give yourself credit for. I might be wrong about that. Correct me if i'm wrong but like maybe it's also you just have such a dog

mentality of like i must i can and i will do you think that that that the mental part like almost that david goggins type thing is playing a role and you oh yeah i think you have to have that mentality if you don't have that mentality i don't think you're gonna be able to do what i did uh so i i agree with you i i think that there's no way uh you gonna be able to do what i did uh so i i agree with you i i think that there's no way uh you would be able to do what i did so i think you have to have that you know no bards hold mentality yes did you have a moment after you came back where a day maybe where you realized oh shit i'm crossing the Rubicon. Like, like these dudes can't keep up.

What do you mean? That I'm getting too good or? No, that, that like, you know, cause when you quit, it was cause you couldn't beat guys. Right. Right. And then you make this decision. I'm going to do exhaust training and I'm going to win. Right.

But obviously that doesn't happen overnight. Like you got to build it up and everything. Did you have a day where you're like, oh, I'm there? Like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd say about three months. Like it, it happened very quickly because I was able to get myself in spectacular shape. I was already in pretty good shape, but getting myself to where I need to be, uh, so that I could wear my opponents down. Uh, it only took about three months. That's crazy. And that's because I was training consistently every single day. And eventually, you know, after, you know, 60, 90 days, your body, you know, adjusts

and it realizes it becomes like a machine, you know, an unstoppable machine. And that's how I felt. Can we actually pull up a picture from like 94, 95 of Kurt, if we can Google that? Because I want to juxtapose this real quickly. Okay. Because like, obviously you were built like a boulder, right? Like you were built in a way like a fullback. Yeah. The third one right there.

This one? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that right but the the thing that's so interesting about sports like wrestling or boxing or even today like with the ufc and everything is that you know it's not obviously brute strength and skill it's also like you gotta it might be a brutal sport but you gotta have incredible grace right you got to – it might be a brutal sport, but you got to have incredible grace, right? You have to have like almost a melodic sense to your movement. So you have to be light on your feet and things like that. Do you think – obviously, like you're training that with your stamina and everything with exhaust training, but also like that footwork and that athleticism and that ability to be calm in there. Is that something that just came naturally to you? Yeah, I did. I always was a, an amazing athlete. You

know, I, I, I always excelled once I got past the, the pussy stage where I, you know, my, my brothers used to pick on me. Once I got past that, I realized how good of an athlete I was. And people always talk about I could have possibly been the greatest athlete in WWE history. So I am that athletic. I really am. I mean, I literally can do a backflip standing and land on my feet without having to run or do anything. At your size. Yeah, yeah.

So I actually did it at the World Championships against Aravat Saviv. At the end, I did a backflip when I won the World Championships. But, I mean, as far as being an athlete, yeah, I've always been a really good athlete. The problem was up here. The problem? The problem, well well when i was not

winning and i'm losing you know i was always afraid i was always afraid to compete afraid to succeed and you know my brothers instilled in me hey just screw it just you got rid of that through it yeah yeah so it just took me a little bit of time yeah that's the callusing the mind right there because obviously you didn't when you got to the mid 90s you you don't seem to have had that no no i didn't no i didn't i was i was a machine on a mission yeah all right well real quick i gotta take a bathroom break i want to say hello to lauren all right so we'll come back i want to talk about fox catcher and obviously what happened there as well we'll be right back back. All right, we're back. So you had mentioned maybe 15, 20 minutes ago about a little bit of the background with Dave and his brother, Mark,

vis-a-vis John DuPont at Fox catcher. And Mark obviously had some, some doubts about John. Yeah. John was acting a little weird as he always did, as he always did. I'm not going to lie to you. I've been in instances where I'd be in his house, his mansion, and I'd be in his awards room, and he'd say, hey, come over for pizza. So I'd come over to have dinner with him. He was going to order pizza. And he'd walk through the awards room, and he had, like, white powder on his nose. And he was sniffing his nose and doing this and trying to, you know, get rid of the cocaine.

And then he would leave the room, and then he'd come back. He had a gun. He'd just have a gun. Yeah, and he's like, Kurt, you need to leave. I'm like, okay, what's going on? He said, you just need to leave. And he took the other guy that was there. His name was Rob Calabrese.

And he said, we need to go downstairs. He always thought somebody was after him. So he thought people were spying on him all the time. Intense paranoia. Yes, yes. So he goes down to the basement and they find a tunnel from the Civil War where they were able to, I don't know if it was getting the slaves through or the soldiers, but it went from the mansion to another home, about 500 yards.

And they went down there and Johnny Pond had the gun loaded and he told Rob, the person he was with, get in the tunnel. And the tunnel was only four feet high. So you had to bend over to get in it. You had to bend over to get in the tunnel. And John was behind Rob, and he points a gun at Rob's ass. And they're walking through the tunnel 500 feet, and Rob's praying to God that the gun doesn't go off. So it was just crazy hearing stories like this that John would do. And we were all a little bit guilty of knowing that John was kind of losing it.

The problem was we didn't want the money train to end. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you. There were instances where we were like, okay, there's something going on here. This guy needs some kind of help. And everybody was just like, let's hold off until the Olympics. Let's just get to the Olympics. And we were almost there. So everybody was going to kind of go their own separate ways after the 96 Olympics.

What about Dave? Dave was too. Was he a part of those conversations? Dave wanted to stay. The only person that John would listen to was Dave. So Dave was the one that really brought John down to reality and would keep him in check. And so that's probably why John killed Dave. It's because Dave was the one that he respected the most.

And I think that there was something there between those two that, you know, I don't know what it was, but for some reason, John just one day decided to go out and shoot Dave. Do you, when you first met John, I think you were talking about like when he pointed at the trophy case or whatever, like that day, did you sense it right away? Like this guy's off? You could tell he was off. Yeah. Um, but he was very eccentric and, uh, he was also pretty smart. So you didn't know if he was crazy or just put on a show. I mean, you know, put it this way. I remember one time he had the world governing body,

the guy that was the head of Fila for the world governing body of wrestling. He was the president of the whole world of wrestling. And he had him as a guest at his farm. And he was in the training facilities. And John comes in and tells him, hey, come with me. And they leave and they go outside and they get into John's car. And when the guy got into John's car, John opened the back door and said, get in, welcome to Balkan Airlines.

And the guy was like, what are you talking about? He's like, get on the plane is what he said. And the guy gets in. He closed the door. He puts a chauffeur hat on. And he drives his car down this hill on his farm. And you have to do a hard left to stay on the road. Because there's a lake right in front of where if you go straight, you're going to go right in the lake.

He went down, floored the car, and went right in the lake. He thought he was taking off on an airplane. uh so this guy comes back to the facility he's soaking wet because john had to save him john had to get him out of the car so he comes back soaking wet the guy's motherfucking everybody he's really pissed off and it was like holy shit john why'd you do that i don't't know. So was he doing crazy stuff? Yeah, he was. And unfortunately, we probably stayed around a little bit too long. And it sucks because, you know, it cost Dave his life.

Yeah. So you said it was like six months before the Olympics? Yes. So this is the beginning of 96? This was January of 96. So essentially one day, and if people haven't seen the movie Foxcatcher, would you say Steve Carell did a pretty? He nailed it.

So did Mark Ruffage. Ruffalo? Ruffalo, I'm sorry. Mark Ruffalo, he did an incredible job. He reminded me of Dave so much, his mannerisms. But they nailed that movie. Yeah. The only thing that didn't happen was they kind of made it look like

Mark Schultz and John DuPont were kind of like close, close, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, like John dyed his hair blonde. Mark, he never did that. That was all, I think it was just a Hollywooded up. Well, they got to do something. Yeah, they probably wanted to add a little another storyline to it,

but that wasn't the case. That was just stupid. My understanding is that the way that they showed the ultimate scene was pretty spot on. Yeah, yeah. From what he did. From what I heard, yes. It's probably that scene with Steve Carell in Foxcatcher is probably one of the more chilling scenes I've ever watched.

Because it almost, the way, who directed that movie? Do we remember that? Oh, gosh. Can we look that up, Alessi? Foxcatcher movie director? I just, I want to give a shout out here. Because, like, it was so well done. But, okay, Bennett, So the director was Bennett Miller. But the way that he filmed that scene before Steve decides, or John in the movie, decides to get in the car.

It's almost like the Fredo Corleone thing. Right. Where he's far shot, laying back, just dead. Like dead to the world in the chair like this. I was getting hard John Cazal vibes. And then he gets in the car drives across the estate to where mark has a home yeah mark or not not like dave i'm sorry where dave has a home dave is greets him in in his driveway and john just rolls down the window and shoots him in front

of his family and then shoots him in the back and then drives off like nothing happened. Yep. He shot him and he got outside the car. Nancy saw, heard the gunshot and she ran out. Dave's a wife. Yeah. And she's like, I'm going to call the cops. And John looked at Dave and shot him in the back while he's laying on the ground. Then he got in his car and went back to his house. And I think John in his own crazy mind thought that he was safe in his house.

He literally told the cops, can I just stay here for my sentence? I mean, you know, he was so out of it. He was a sick guy. Yeah, yeah, he really was. And you know what? He was probably that way before we even knew him. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so.

Might have been a little DuPont inbreeding going on there. You never know. Well, that's the, you you know there are rumors going around that that could have been possible yeah he was off for sure yeah but where do you remember where you were when that happened i was actually training at duquesne university in pittsburgh i called dave that afternoon about the time he was getting killed um i called him to tell him i'm coming out tomorrow so i'll be there i'll be ready for me and uh then i got done wrestling at wrestling practice at duquesne and i was watching the news i looked on cnn it said

dave schultz was just shot and killed by john dupont and i was like holy shit like this is world news like i just called dave this afternoon and here he's gone so it was like what happened you know and then i thought i guess i do know what happened john john cracked i mean you know it's not it wasn't a surprise you know i just was hoping it wouldn't happen until we were gone it's crazy how like in the build-up to something like that it's as you described it you guys the attitude is almost like all right let's just let's make it 96 but like in the back of your mind subconsciously you know this guy could do something not necessarily to dave but to anybody and then he did yes he did and we were wrong you know you should have left and you like you lose one of your best friends and like your mentor yes and you're six months ahead of trying to live out your dream.

Yeah. What was the schedule at this point? Had you done the Olympic trials yet to make it? No, no. You hadn't. That came two months later. Two months later. Okay.

So I was without Dave for the rest of my career, the next six months. But especially for those crucial two months. Thing is, Foxcatcher was still paying the athletes. And what they did is their attorney wanted to make it look like the wrestlers were taking advantage of John. So they were trying to keep all the athletes on payroll. And we all got paid. So it wasn't a lot of money, but we all got paid.

But I called Foxcatcher and I told them, I don't want the blood money, I quit all got paid. But I called Foxcatcher, and I told them, I don't want the blood money. I quit. And they were like, are you sure? Because we'll pay you all the way up until the Olympics. And I said, no, I don't want it. And Nancy Schultz heard that I quit. And she called me and said, listen,

I'm starting a Dave Schultz Wrestling Club. I want you to be our first member. And I start crying. I was like, wow, this is a huge honor. How soon after his death was that? A week and a half, two weeks, really quick. Right away. Yeah, and you know what's crazy?

She had sponsors stepping up. Oh, I'm sure. They were like, let's do this. Yeah, the guy was a hero. Yeah, so they funded that wrestling club. They showed this wrestling club for years. So that's essentially, this is this is what similar what you were talking about earlier is the ambassador to the wrestling team now in the u.s

right they're trying to accomplish the same thing where you can fund the wrestlers so yes i mean i only got a thousand dollars a month but it was enough for me to make ends meet yeah right so yeah so and that's what i'm trying to do for usa wrestling today yeah yeah so you're the first wrestler that joined that, and I would imagine, I don't know the story exactly, but a bunch of wrestlers joined her behind you. Oh, yeah, they followed suit, yes. That's great.

And then she was able to keep the club alive for about 10 years, but then she had to fold because there was no money left. She wasn't getting the sponsors anymore. They kind of, you know, hiked. They took a hike and left and, you know, said, okay, we're good. That's kind of the sad thing, though. Yeah, it is sad. But, you know, they're businesses, and I know they have to survive.

And, you know, they did their, I guess they felt they did their duty by keeping it alive for 10 years. And they did. I mean, I give them credit for it. Yeah, that's the thing, though. You have someone who was arguably, like, the biggest legend in the history of the sport, though. And, you know, he dies tragically young. It's this international story. And yet, it just goes to show you, and I hear you, like, obviously, they helped out for, like, 10 years and stuff.

But, like, you know, you die at some point. It doesn't matter what you did at some point. Like, even the gravity of your legacy, like, the good things that are supposed to come with that, people forget them. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's a shame. Yeah. But that's cool that Nancy did that. I mean, you know, like right after her husband dies, too.

Like, that's. She was such a rock. You know, she was doing the media and you know at the funeral she kept her composure they were so in love i mean those two were the greatest couple i've ever known uh they were both very very identical they were both beach bums from california you know and they were like dude we're cool dude you know it's just like you know yeah. I know, really. That's like the opposite. Yeah, living in Newtown Square is compared to California. But Dave always wanted to go back to California.

And I think he was waiting until that 1996 Olympics was over and he was going to make his move. But it just, you know, John DuPont killed him six months early. Obviously, after this happened, you talked to Mark as well. Yeah, I still talk to him today. Well, that's great. I mean, because he knew he was off and he left. I mean, that's got to, I can't, as like the guy's brother,

I can't even imagine what that feels like. You know, Mark didn't say this, but he should have said, I told you so, Dave. I mean, he couldn't because Dave was dead. But I mean, it's really, Mark warned Dave. He said, listen, the guy's not all there. And Dave thought, you know what? I met him.

I think I can control him. And he was able to control John for a while. Dave was the only one that John would listen to. And I believe that's when John cracked, Dave was the only one that John would listen to. And I believe that's when, when John cracked, Dave was the first one that he wanted to kill

because that was the guy he respected the most. Yeah. And I think he was jealous of Dave's success and jealous that everybody loved Dave. And Dave was the guy

that everybody was drawn to. Yes. And so was John. I think John wanted to take that away from Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Always comes back to the same things. Pride, things wanted to take that away from Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Always comes back to the same things.

Pride, things like that, even with people that are deranged. But anyway, so you join the new Dave Schultz Wrestling Club. Yes. And you now, you said two months later, you go into trials for the Olympics. So at the time, how did that work? How many rounds were you looking at? Like how would you qualify to be the guy? The first round is the U.S. Open. You have to place in the top six there to qualify for the

second round. Okay. So I went to the US Open that year and I was having a great tournament. I wrestled. I went to the semifinals. I was winning in the semifinals and I got thrown on my head and I broke my neck. That's when I broke my neck, the first rally Olympic trials. So my neck was in excruciating pain. Did you know you broke it when you got flipped? No, but I knew something was wrong because my neck was killing me. My arms were totally numb. I couldn't feel my arms. How do you wrestle like that? I don't know. I don't know. I blacked out, man. Yeah. And I couldn't feel my arms, my hands, my arms, nothing. So I ended up going behind. The guy was ahead of me now, three to two.

And I had to come up with a couple points to win that match. And I did eventually. I won four to three. With a broken neck. Yes, with my neck broken. And then the tough part was waiting eight hours. And then I had to wrestle in the finals. Did you get a diagnosis between them? Okay. I went to see a chiropractor. He

started cracking my neck and I'm like, what the fuck? Stop. I was like, stop. You're killing me. I was having sharp pains in my neck going down my spine. I was like, this isn't working don't do that anymore so you go to a doctor i went to a no story ever the worst mistake i could have made never ended well like that so i i i was like okay i'm okay i'm okay don't do that anymore so he's like well we need to ice it so obviously so we iced it but um uh eight hours later I had to wrestle in the finals. And I was like, I was thinking, okay, the thing is, I want to explain something. When you win the nationals, the U.S. Open, you automatically go to the finals of the trials. Of the Olympic trials.

Yes. So if you take second in the nationals down to sixth you go into a mini tournament and the winner of that mini tournament wrestles the u.s champion for the to make the olympic how many rounds is the mini tournament there there's there's a tournament uh the day before you wrestle the winner of the u.s open so you have the u.s open the top six go to the final trials right number two to six wrestle in a mini tournament to wrestle the top guy. Oh. That won the US Open.

Wow. So it's almost like you earned your right to a buy. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So if I would have forfeited that match in the US Open finals, I would have had to wrestle in the mini tournament and I would have got my neck crushed.

Like I would have had to go through three guys just to wrestle to the guy in the finals. So I was thinking about forfeiting my match because my neck was killing me. So I was like, you know what? I'll take second. I'll wrestle in the mini tournament. If I win the mini tournament,

I'll go on and wrestle the U.S. Open champion, and hopefully I'll win the Olympics. My brothers were like, what the fuck are you thinking? Your neck is fucked up right now, and you don't even know what's wrong with it. You better wrestle in this finals and try to win. So you have a bye to the finals and the final trials. Yeah, so if they weren't there, I would have forfeited.

But my brothers, they were always there. They were always fucking crazy. They would come up to me, and they could see I doubt my face. They could tell I was nervous. I wasn't thinking straight. I was doubting myself. They'd start slapping me in the face. Come on.

Wake the fuck up. It was so intense. I always knew when my brothers came around, they were going to be like that. Apparently. So they fired me up and they got me ready to wrestle in that match so i ended up winning the finals who was it against carrie mccoy two-time olympian from penn state uh one of the greatest olympic or u.s wrestlers of all time um i i couldn't do anything so i basically was underhooking him and trying to keep him from scoring on me. And I was trying to push him around the mat to make me look like the aggressor

because I couldn't take shots because my neck was killing me. My arms were numb. So the match was 0-0, 0-0 in overtime, referee's decision. I won the match by referee's decision. It was that close. Like a Floyd Mayweather type. Yes. Thank God I ended up in the finals of the trials.

So now I had to go home and let my neck rest and heal. I went home the next day and I went to the doctor and he said, listen, you have four broken vertebrae. Four. Yeah. He said, you have two disc stick directly in your spinal cord and your spinal cord is bruised badly. He said, that bruising will never go away. He said, you're fucked. You're done. You can't wrestle anymore. And I was devastated. Oh, period. Yes, yes. So I was like, I'm going to get a second opinion.

So I went to another doctor. You went to a chiropractor? Yeah, you know what? He would have passed me to wrestle, definitely. But no, I went to another doctor. And this doctor basically said the same thing. But he also said, he said, when's the next round of the Olympic trials? I said, six weeks. He said, you know what? I might be able to get you ready by

that. I said, how are you going to get me ready? He said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to stick you with 12 different shots of Novocaine all throughout your neck, five minutes before each one of your matches. Therefore, you won't feel the pain. You'll forget your neck is broken and you'll wrestle more freely.

But he said, I'm warning you, an hour after your matches are over, the Novocaine is going to wear off and you're going to be in excruciating pain from the abuse of neck tanks during those matches. Yeah, if it's still there. Yeah, so I was like, okay, let's do it. And it worked. It worked. And I ended up – and the crazy thing is I went to the trials that way.

My neck still wasn't healed entirely. My neck was still broken. And it was still broken when I wrestled in the Olympics because I was still wrestling those matches where I wrestled best out of three for the finals of the trials. That guy knew my neck was broken. So he was cranking on my neck, trying to injure my neck even further.

And my neck took a toll by doing that. So I kind of rebroke my neck there. And so then I had to take a whole month off where I couldn't train at all. And then I started training very slowly. I joined the Olympic team in Atlanta, around that area where we were training for the Olympics. But I joined them late because I had to let my neck rest in the hill for a while.

What month was the final trial again? The final trials was in June. The Olympics was in July. Okay. So you do the final trial. You basically take a month off. You join literally right before the Olympics then? Yes. Yes. you basically take a month off you join like literally right before the olympics then yes yes okay now did you go did you get i'm sorry if i missed this in there but after you do the trial in june and you somehow win with the novocaine and everything do you go to a doctor again and get the opinion yeah and and what happened was my neck didn't get any better. Yeah, no kidding. It was basically rebroken.

The breaks were still there. So he said, listen, we're going to have to rest. You're going to have to just – you can do a little bit of light weight training for lifting, and you can do your conditioning, but you can't wrestle. Okay. You got to take a break for a while. Now I got the timeline down at least. I was just trying to get it right in my head. So you're in the buildup to what's going to be the biggest you know

tournament of your life you aren't really able to train no are you just like sitting on the couch every day with icing i can't picture you sitting still no you know what i was doing stim machine for my neck i was uh uh i was doing neck stretches really nice and light and easy because I didn't want to do any detriment or any harm to my neck. So, you know what? I was doing some conditioning where I was doing sprint work and long distance running. You were doing sprints? Because it didn't affect my neck. Oh, yeah.

Not at all. But I was still able to do some training where I couldn't do bench press because I couldn't post my head against the mat. Right. So I had to do like a machine press, you know. Oh, you're still – I was still lifting. He didn't take off. He's like, yeah, I took off for a month.

He's fucking – I had to do something. Yeah, something. I had to do something to keep my body in shape. Yeah, something that all of us would think is like sociopath mode. Hey, I didn't have a choice. No, clearly. Clearly, you told yourself that.

But can we pull up a picture of Kurt again back at the Olympics? Because also, you were built like a... I didn't have a neck. Yeah, yeah. So where does the neck even begin for you? Well, you know what my doctor said? That's what he said. He said, Kurt, your neck's not broken because you have to have a neck.

That's what he said to He said, Kurt, your neck's not broken because you have to have a neck. That's what he said to me. Look at this. Yeah, it's like your head blends right into your shoulders. So that, I mean, scientifically, you know, I'm no physicist, but I feel like that's got to help. Oh, definitely. That definitely helped me. Actually, I would probably be dead if I didn't have the neck I had because the way I landed on my head, uh, that, that could have killed me the way. Yeah. I mean, I did some real long-term

damage to this day to my spinal cord. Yeah. I, they showed that I remember in your documentary where the actual moment where you got flipped on there and land on your head. I can't even watch it. I'm one of those guys. like when someone gets injured in the NFL, I turn my head. Oh, man, when I hit it and I came up, I was like, oh, shit. Something's going on. Can't feel my arms. Yeah.

Put me back in, ref. Let's go. You've got to be built different to do that. So you arrive right before the Olympics start. And again, you really were training for a month, but just not. Right, right. No wrestling okay no wrestling so before you hopped on the mat for the first match did you at least like get a day warm-up in there where you did wrestle yes yes i still wrestled for about two weeks very lightly um i did a lot more drilling define lightly uh drilling where you don't wrestle

live you just practice moves. Okay. So I was shooting high crotches, single legs, double legs, taking a person down, doing gut wrenches to turn them, just going through the drills. And I did a little bit of live wrestling, but I didn't want to do too much because I knew that it would be detrimental to my neck.

Now, like you said, everyone who's going to be coming up against you knows your neck's fucked up. Yes, yes. Did they know it was broken? Yes. What happened was, I don't know how, why the coach did this, but I called the USA wrestling coach. And I told him, I said, listen, I know that in the past you've postponed matches for the Olympic trials because of injury. I said, I have a broken neck.

I can't wrestle at the next trials. Is there any way I can get a postponement? Because after I won the U.S. Open, I was in the finals of the Olympic trials. So I was there already. So I called the USA Wrestling Coach and I said, can I extend that another month? You know, whoever wins the mini tournament,

can we do it a month later? Because I'm going to have to, my neck, I'm going to have to let it heal. And he's like he's like no you're gonna have to wrestle with your neck broken i was like well you did it in the past you did it for a wrestler named randy lewis uh and he ended up yeah so he was injured he they extended it a couple months so he and they wouldn't do it for me and but that's how everybody found out about my broken neck. Because I told the USA wrestling coach. And he probably told other coaches.

Well, he told other coaches. And then other coaches told other coaches. And then wrestlers told wrestlers. And then the word got out. We need some wrestling omerta, man. I don't like this. There's way too much information being shared here. Yeah, yeah.

So everybody knew. My opponents for the final trials when I wrestled Dan Chay, best out of three, he tried to mess my neck up by cranking my neck and doing all that stuff. That was the guy doing it. Yes, yes. So I went to the Olympics and I had a couple guys there try it

too at the beginning. But you know what? It worked to my advantage because they were so worried about my neck that they were reaching and I was tacking their legs. So it actually worked to my advantage. I mean, I actually, I don't know if I would have won, to be honest with you. Without the broken neck? Yeah, because, no, no, without, no, I could have won healthy, but knowing my neck was

broken, knowing those guys were so focused on my neck it left them open and it just made it easier for me to win did you watch a lot of tape of them too ahead of time oh yes definitely so you're studying what they do and then and they're studying what i do and could you do you think because obviously you've never wrestled them before with a broken neck at that point right maybe you wrestled them before in other competitions without a broken neck. But could you, when you were watching the tape, could you kind of translate what they would do under the assumption that they would be trying to fuck with your neck

and therefore what you could do to counter that? Yeah, and the problem is this guy that I was going to wrestle, he was probably the worst opponent for me to wrestle because he liked to do a lot of front headlocks. And that's when you, that when uh if your head was down and i had a your head locked this way where where your head's here and your body is here it's great for the neck yeah right right so he had a lot of technique there where he like cranked the neck and i knew that i couldn't get my neck down there and get it vulnerable so i knew that my shots had to be specific when I take a shot because he would sprawl and put a front headlock on me. Then he would do moves where he would get my jaw and twist my head to the side and be able to expose my back to the mat.

And that's points for him. Yeah, yeah. So I knew that he was really capable of doing that. So I didn't want to put myself in that position. So it was very difficult for me to want to attack him. Because I knew if I attacked, I was going to pay the price. Yeah. But he was worried about my neck.

So he was reaching. And I was, you know, he left himself open. I had to attack his legs. Shimmy and shake. It worked extremely well for me. And that's why I say with the broken neck, I don't know if I would have beaten him if he wasn't trying to hurt my neck. Yeah. It could have been different. It's so strange how that works out. And you don't have

your coach obviously. Cause cause Dave was killed. Is there anyone like helping you out? Oh yeah. Yeah. We had other coaches. Um. You know, Greg Strobel was another coach. Bruce Burnett was a USA coach. Dave was just my personal coach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So when you get the broken neck diagnosis, do you tell your mom and your brothers about that? Yeah, they, well, I didn't find out till the day after the U.S. Open. I went home, and the doctor took an MRI of my neck, and that's when he told me, you know, your neck's broken. And I had to go home and tell my family. And, you know, what's crazy is my mom started crying.

You know, that gold medal meant just as much to her as it did to me. And she knew that if my dreams were crushed, you know, that it would hurt me dramatically. But did she want to, I mean, you have a broken neck. You are her kid. Was she trying to say, like, this ain't the time? Well, what's crazy is my mom's the one that said, why don't you get a second opinion?

So my mom's the crazy one. No, son of mine, you pussy. Why don't you get a second opinion? I'm like, that's a good idea, Mom. So I went to Dr. Maroon, who is one of the best surgeons in Pittsburgh in history. He works with the Steelers and Pitt University. And he's done a lot of – he's actually frontiered a new neck surgery that I think he does the disc replacement that where you take out your old disc and put the new ones in. And so he was always ahead of his time.

And he's the one that came up with the old fashioned, let's just shoot your neck up with Novocaine. He's come a long way since then. Yeah, definitely. But I thought, man, that is a little savage, but it worked. Yeah. It actually worked. I mean, the thing is, you try that today, no doctor will clear you because they know they're going to get sued. Yeah.

You know, back in 95, 96, there weren't a lot of lawsuits, you know. People weren't suing other people. So he was like, you know what? I'll clear you. We'll stick you in the neck with Novocaine. We'll get you ready. So that was it. That was the plan.

And how many matches did you have to do start to finish in the Olympics? Five. And I had to do my two best out of three matches at the Olympic trials finals. So seven total with my neck broken, where I had shots of Novocaine. Yeah. But on to the Olympics. So obviously you're going up against the best in the world here. Some of these guys, had you wrestled a couple of them before in other events?

Yes. I wrestled the guy. I wrestled in the semifinals. I did wrestle him. Is that the Russian? Yeah. I wrestled two Russians, one in the third round and the fourth round. Okay.

But let me see. I wrestled a Mongolian, never wrestled him before. I wrestled a Cuban, never wrestled him. He was seven foot tall. He was a sum of bitches. Seven foot tall. Seven foot tall, man. He had so much leverage.

You didn't get that height. That match was two nothing. It was really close. Overtime, double overtime, it was a scary match. You didn't get that height. That match was two, nothing. It was really close. Overtime, double overtime was, it was a scary match, but that, that guy was one of the hardest person people for me to wrestle.

And he was another one trying to break your neck. Yes. Yes. He was, he, he was all over my head, all over my neck. And then I had a Russian,

the third round, and then another Russian, the fourth round. And then I had Abishadidi who was from Iran, the finals so the only wrestler that i wrestled prior before the olympics was the fourth guy i wrestled the russian how did you feel like you're getting novocaine up before all these well you know what i i want to tell you something this is actually pretty funny but the russian i wrestled okay he he was uh he was a real stud okay he beat my ass like like two years prior and uh i'll be honest with you until 95 i was 0 and 11 against russians i couldn't beat a russian so my mentality is now they were soviet right right so my mentality was

um i'll just take second place i'll just lose to the russian that was my mentality was, I'll just take second place. I'll just lose to the Russian. That was my mentality going into the Olympic Games. No, no, going into the World Championships in 95. I was like, you know what? If I wrestle a Russian, I'll lose to him, but at least I'll beat everybody else. That was my mentality. We don't lose to Russians in America, Curt. But I beat the Russian in the 95 Worlds.

And that gave me the confidence to go on to the next Olympics and not worry about not ever beating a Russian. I actually beat one. So it just took me a long time to do it. But I ended up wrestling this guy in the semifinals of the Olympics. He beat my ass two years prior, and he looked like Homer Simpson. Oh, no. He was 5'8 eight what was his name he was

the big stomach just uh frumpy uh constantine i think constantine all right constantine wrestler 96 olympics russia this isn't the one who defected to germany is it no that's that's uh eravat sabiv okay yeah all, let's pull this guy up. Just see what he looks like. Homer Simpson. Yes, he did. I'm trying to picture this. My brother gave him that nickname.

You got all those Pittsburgh guys up in the crowd. You look like fucking Homer. And he was a bitch to beat too, man. I had a hard time with him. All right. Any of these look familiar? 1990s. Yeah, 1990s yeah 1990s the second one no no those are pro wrestlers type in russia type in russia russian olympic wrestler you know what put kyrgyzstan this guy no that's uh that's the greco guy the badass that dominated for 12 years. Karelin.

That's Alexander Karelin. Take out Russian and instead of 1990s, do 1996. What is that, Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan. I don't think we know how to spell that. All right. Let's see. Maybe this guy?

No, that's an NJ. Damn it. I really want to see what this guy looks like. Summer Olympics an NJ. Damn it. I really want to see what this guy looks like. Summer Olympics, right there. Let me see. The hat right there.

Dude, 1996. Yeah, yeah. Wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Hit that article. These are the names right here. Oh, shit.

Yeah, yeah. Constantine. Well, what was his last name? Do you remember? Romanian Freestyle? No, he's not from Romania. Go up to the article, Alessi. Go all the way up.

Yeah, wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics. No, no, no. Right there. Yeah, perfect. All right, so let's see. So go down. Let's see where we see Kurt. What would you be under, Kurt?

Sorry, there's a lot going on here. Let me see. Number one, 100 kilos. Why? Go up. That's the Greco-Roman. That's why. Kurt Angle, 100 kilos. So, type in, go to details.

Yeah, yeah. Hit that. Alright, here we go. Now we we got it so we got kurt versus yes all right let's copy and paste that let's see what this guy looked like if he doesn't look like homer i'm gonna be upset kurt all right hit images is there even a picture of him? That's crazy. It's got to be this guy. There he is.

All right. From the side, he kind of does. I see what you mean. He was a bit frumpy. I wish there was a better picture than that. If you would have seen him, like, he... And that's you. He walked out, and he didn't have, like, he didn't have that...

He was just, like, you know, just frumpy, just arms hanging down. Looks like a wimp. Yeah. But when he gets on the mat, he's an animal. Strong like bull. Yes, yes, exactly. That's it. Okay.

So he was another one trying to break your neck, unsuccessful. Yeah. So you're doing the Novocaine. You said like an hour after these matches, though, you'd just be in searing pain. Yeah, yeah. When the Novocaine wore off man i was it was game time i was like holy shit this is so much pain uh i would get like sharp pains going down my neck uh i was i was doing damage to my neck when i was doing this so my you know my doctor was like

listen you you know hopefully you won't do too much damage because the result could be paralysis. You could definitely get paralyzed. Of course. You know, if you got another blow on your head like you did, you'd definitely be paralyzed. So he was like, I know you have to be careful. I know it's very difficult to do that. But, you know, try not to take too many chances. Yeah.

Now, it was five matches, though. How many days in between matches? Like one? Two days. I wrestled three the first day and two the second. Oh, it was two days total? Yes, two days total. Oh, so your recovery is when the Novocaine rolls off is like another four hours, and you've got to get the hell back in there. Yes, yes.

Oh, my God. Yep, and then they'd stick me with the Novocaine again, and I'd go in. I mean, I got to imagine. It's just like crazy adrenaline running through your body because that's a sprint. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know what? After a while, I didn't even think about my neck. You know, only time I did is an hour after matches were over.

I was like, oh, fuck, my neck's killing me. But when I was out there, you know, after I won the trials, I was like, I'm cool. I know I'm not going to feel it. So when I go in there in the Olympics, I'm going to do the best I can. I'm not going to worry about my neck because I knew that as long as I didn't feel the pain, I wouldn't be reminded that I had a broken neck. And the Novocaine did the job for me. You're just able to, that blows,

and I'm sure it blows the mind of almost everyone listening. Like, you're just able to mentally separate broken neck from goal. I had to. I didn't have a choice. That's crazy. Yeah. Absolutely insane. So the final match is against that big Iranian motherfucker.

Yep, yep, Abedinidi. And that match was an interesting match because it could have gone either way. And I think the reason why they picked me is because I had a takedown at the end where I ended up on top of him, and the referee was about to give me a point, and time ran out. And so I think that was the crucial move that that took me to the you know got me a gold medal but he was not going down without fighting like he he he went over to the referees to see who who who they picked because they circled the winner right knock them out and he

acted like he won yeah he was like yes i won yeah and i'm like oh i lost so i was thinking another four years because i I wanted a gold medal. I didn't want it. I didn't want silver. And so I'm all depressed. My head's down. And the referee goes to grab our hands and raise one of the hands. And the Iranian's hand goes up in the air.

I was like, shit, I did lose. And all of a sudden, the ref pushes it down. He raises my hand. And what happened was the Iranian raised his own hand. So he raised his own hand. It looked like the ref raised it. The ref was like, no, you didn't fucking win. You did.

So I was so excited. I hugged the ref. I was like, thank you. What's that? What does that feel like, though? You're chasing something that, as you outlined earlier, you had dreamed of for years and years and years. You reach the absolute apex of the sport.

There's nothing higher than winning the gold medal at the Olympics in wrestling. In that moment, can you even appreciate it or is it all just a blur? It's all a blur. It's all a blur. I wish I could remember a lot of it, but I can't. I was so focused and I was so nervous. It's like I don't want to remember some of that stuff because it got so stressful. And, you know, I was in a bind all the time.

I always had something wrong with me and, you know, things weren't always going the right way. And, you know, I had to always focus and make sure that I, you know, didn't make any mistakes. And it just wasn't a good experience for me. I wish I would have soaked it in. I would have wished I would have said I did soak in open ceremonies. That was kind of cool. I'll tell you a quick story. You're going to love this.

I, I just walked into the arena and to the arena, the stadium for the opening ceremonies. And as I, the USA team's walking in, okay. They, everybody else is already in there, the opening ceremonies. And as I, the USA team's walking in, okay, they, everybody else is already in there, the whole world. And we were the last because we were, it's,

it's alphabetic order. United States of America, the U, is at the end of the alphabet. So, I start walking in and the fans are going nuts. I'm like,

I'm fucking important, man. It's all right. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Because I just walked in so that, that was the first person they saw. I was like, thank you right thank you yeah yeah thank you because I just walked in so that that was the first person I said they saw I was like thank you thank you

I look behind me in the fucking dream teams it was hilarious I was like oh man Michael Jordan's behind me you gotta soak it in and pretend that it was for you. You just got to roll with it. You know what? No, no. It bummed me out. They don't know me. That's funny, though.

But, I mean, you got to think when you do it. Obviously, like you said, it is a blur. But, you know, I've seen the video of you right after being interviewed. And you're like, first you were on your knees. Then you get up and you're crying. And you gave the medal to your mom. Like you said, that's got to be, in hindsight, even if some of it's missed in there because there was a lot going on, it's got to be a really special, like maybe one of the most special memories outside of your wedding and your kid's birth.

Oh, without a doubt. I mean, it was the, besides me getting married and having my kids, it was the greatest moment in my life. It really was. Because that's what my family strived for. We wanted to be, you know, the best in whatever we did. And that's how I was raised and for me to be able to go to the ultimate goal to attain and be able to get it, you know, shows that what my family did, it wasn't for nothing. Yeah. You know, they all represented something to me and they were always, you know,

brother or father figures for me and they were always there for me, you know, brother or father figures for me. And they were always there for me, you know, whether they were kicking my ass or supporting me, you know, they were always there for me. And we did it as a unit, you know, even though wrestling is an individual sport, I wouldn't have done it without my team. Oh, sure. That's my family.

And they're the only ones I could trust. And they were always there for me. You know, it's crazy. They never missed any of my sporting events. None of them. I raised money. I raised enough money to have my family travel with me overseas and to the Olympics and to the World Championships

and to the U.S. Open and the Olympic trials. They were always there. Probably intimidating all the people around them. I didn't want them there because I don't want them slapping the shit out of me before my match. But, you know, I just love having them there. And knowing they were there was my extra strength, you know. You ever seen Nikola Jokic's brothers, the great basketball player from Serbia?

No, no. So he's a seven-footer. He's got these two mongoloid brothers who are his older brothers who taught him everything and whatever. And they go to all his games, and they'll get in fights with the fans and shit. And this whole time you're talking about your brothers, I'm just picturing the Pittsburgh Mafia rolling up. And people are like, all right, out of your way, sir. That's what it was like. That's so cool, though.

They were all my size. So my brothers were all pretty big dudes, you know. I can imagine. Yeah. But so you get to experience all that with them. And, you know, going into this, was your thought always like one and done? I'll win a gold medal and I want to be done? Or did you have the thought of like, oh, I want to continue and maybe do the next Olympics?

I would have continued if I didn't have such a stressful two years um weighing the worlds and then after that going to the olympics and then losing dave and then breaking my neck and having to go through all that i think i would have probably continued on but but I wanted to, I knew that I put myself through an unremarkable amount of stress. And it was the toughest thing I ever did was to overcome my neck injury and win the Olympic gold medal. So I knew I was done. I knew that I didn't want to feel any kind of stress anymore. I didn't want to have to put myself in a situation like that again,

even though I did in WWE. But I wanted to go on to something else. I knew it wasn't like I wanted to be known as the greatest Olympic wrestler of all time by winning three Olympic gold medals. One was good enough for me, and I was on to something else. And I think that's how I've been my whole life is once I get something accomplished, I want to was on to something else and i think that's how i've been my whole life is once i get something accomplished i want to move on to something else and accomplish something there what so what what was the in between winning the olympics in in july 96 and joining it was wwf

at the time right how much how much time was in between that? Two years. And the WWE offered me a contract in 96. And you turned them down? Yes, it was a multi-million dollar deal and I don't know why I turned it down. My agent actually decided for me. He said, you're not signing this contract. They're fake. You're real.

I was like, okay. And he said, don't worry, I'll get you a job. He got me a job sportscasting, which I was fucking horrible. I'm thinking you're going to say like insurance. But yeah, so you have two, either way, you have two years there. We're now. Got my neck healing. Yeah, you got your neck healing.

That's great. But you also, outside of those five months where you kind of like found yourself in, in 93, 94, like this is the first time in your adult and even like child life where you're not, where, you know, you don't have anything to train for and you're not going back to it. And, and listen,

you're in a sport where you're a beast. This is, you know, no disrespect. This ain't golf, right? Like, like,

like you're a monster every day, not just when you go in there and wrestle with people, but when you're training, it's, this ain't golf, right? Like, like, like you're a monster every day, not just when you go in there and wrestle with people, but when you're training, it's a mentality, it's, it becomes a part of you and your identity as it very clearly did yours. How do you, how did you deal with that? Like, was that extremely difficult to be away from, from that lifestyle? Yeah, I went into a big depression. I was doing sports casting for about a year. I felt like I wasn't done being an athlete. I was thinking about going back to the Olympics, but then that thought kind of passed by. And I was like, well, WLB offered me a contract a couple of years ago. I'll call them and see if it still stands. So I called the WLB and they said, no, the contract doesn't stand, but you can come up

and try out just like everybody else. And I figured nothing in my life's ever come easily. This won't either. I'll go up and work for it. So I went up and tried out, but I picked up on everything so quickly. They offered me a contract after day one, but the contract was horrible it was 75 grand a year and that's including me having to travel they paid for my airfare but i had to pay for rental car hotel food tolls bullshit yep yep so 75 grand didn't go very far when you're when you're married and uh you're you're paying a mortgage and you're paying for your on-road expenses. So you were already married to your wife at this time? Yes, yes.

How did you meet her? This is my first wife. I met her doing like a – Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That was a long time ago. My second wife I married in 2012. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Now I'm on track with i i i had thought you hadn't met her yet at that point in my well i didn't meet my my wife now yeah yeah of course so your the original contract they offer you is not on there you got to take this way smaller one you said you picked it up quickly though like i i think the thing like i was never a huge wwe guy or anything like i'm not gonna sit here and act like i was i was watching all that but you obviously have guys in there who are like the pinnacle athletes many of them were like great wrestlers before you know and i guess the ones who

maybe weren't like they were great at other sports and stuff like that and at the end of the day they're you guys the whole point is like you're acting and you're faking some things. But in doing these insane acrobatic moves, it's also real because there's insane injuries that occur. You guys are jumping from fucking 20 feet in the sky. Doing stunts. Yeah. So like when you go in there, it's obviously way different than what you had done on a competing basis. But day one, like were you impressed with the physicality of what these guys did because

you're what you're doing there is self-mutilation self-mutilation yeah when you when you bump that means you're getting slammed when someone slams you or clotheslines you you bump on the ground you're bumping on plywood it's like this so. So you're going from your feet to your back, quick, bumping, and your head even hits. It's great for your neck. Oh, it's horrible. Like, I took my first bump, and I said, fuck this, I quit. I told my manager, I'm not doing it.

And so I left, but he talked me into going back the next day and sticking with it. And so I got through the next day, and it was the hardest thing i ever did as as bumping because when you start out uh wrestling first thing you learn is how to bump properly for safety so you're bumping 500 times every day and that that takes a toll on your body i mean you get the first day i was sore as hell like oh yeah you know but but what took the soreness away was bumping again because it warms your body up.

But I learned very quickly that pro wrestling is basically self-mutilation. Yeah. I mean, it is really difficult. If you don't want to put any wear and tear on your body, you know, stay away from wrestling, you know, or pro wrestling. If you want to stay healthy and you don't want any long-term damage done to your body, stay away from pro wrestling

because once you do it and you're stuck in it and it's addictive, once you get into it, you stay in it as long as you possibly can. What's addictive about it? The fans, you know,

the money. Just doing, you know, performing, you know the money uh just doing you know performing you know for them uh it becomes very addictive and uh but i i enjoyed it i enjoyed all of it and uh you know i just it was tough it was tough on my body yeah yeah now where medically when you first go to try out where's your neck at this point is it it still officially broken or has that healed? No, it's healed. It's healed. You know, I only had my pinky finger never came back.

This is numb. It's been numb since the 96 Olympics. I can't feel this. I could chop it off. I wouldn't know it. It's really that bad. It's always cold. No circulation.

I lost all my muscle in my finger look you feel your hands there's muscle there yeah there's nothing here yeah i uh so i've i've atrophied my arms have actually three atrophied three inches each uh you know so my my pec i have a look at no muscle right here i could see that that's like off kilter from this one yeah no no so i i were you good at the time though like when you were first trying out that was still okay right yes yes so i i've had a lot of atrophy yeah um so i'm paying the price for it but uh i don't regret it i i had a great career, especially wrestling in WWE. I had a lot of funny moments with the fans. And I was really surprised of how entertaining I could be.

Knowing that coming from wrestling, where you show no emotion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I never thought I had a personality to begin with. So doing what I was able to do in wwe and making an ass out of myself uh it was easy for me to do that stuff because i knew i was a badass yeah you know a lot of wrestlers like i'm not doing that that's stupid i'm gonna look like an idiot well that's the point and you know and they're usually the people that never been in a fight or never been in a real competition. So they always have this, you know, idea that they're going to look weak. You know, for me, I didn't care. So I was the one that Vince could go to, Vince McMahon, and say,

hey, have Kurt do this silly shit, you know. And I was game for it. But you're coming in at a time, too, like Stone Cold Steve Austin's in there. The Rock is in there. I beat those two, my first two world titles. in at a time too like stone cold steve austin's in there the rock is in there they're the i beat those two my first two world titles i beat rock for my first i beat stone cold for my second now how does how does that work too because again like you guys are choreographing a lot of this right so it's like you get you you the result is determined by the company right right okay but at

the end of the day like you're you're putting on a show with insane acrobatics and you guys train that together ahead of time. Yeah, you just have to make it look like a fight. Right. To a certain extent. Right. But did you, like when you were coming in, did some of those guys like help you out

with the entertainer aspect? Well, nobody helped me with the entertainment aspect, but when I started, they only had me train for seven months. That's nothing. Like seven months of training is absolutely nothing in pro wrestling. And Vince McMahon basically said, listen, we're going to start you on TV.

You're either going to sink or swim. I mean, he gave me that choice. And so I didn't have a choice but to swim. And it's crazy because, you know, he's telling me, hey, you have a problem tonight. And this is what I's crazy because you know he's telling me hey you have a problem tonight and this is what i want you to say and he would say it he'd be talking for like eight minutes and i'd be like holy fuck how am i gonna remember this right he wouldn't give you a script no no the first night on air he didn't give me a script he wanted he tested me and i and and when he said everything i went vince i'm sorry but i didn't hear a word you said he said everything, I went, Vince, I'm sorry, but I didn't hear a word you said.

He said, I'm going to tell you one more time. You have to go out and do it. And I went out and did about 80% of it. And he was like, I have a good idea. This guy's going to be somebody. Did you become the heel right away? Yeah, yeah. Vince, he had this idea of me preaching the three I's, intensity, integrity, and intelligence,

but not really being that person. Like I was cheating. So the fans hated me at the beginning. And I told Vince, there's no way fans are going to hate me. I said, I'm an Olympic gold medalist. I'm an American hero. He said, don't worry. We'll get them to hate you.

And he was right. He was right. Yeah, preaching the three I's and doing the opposite definitely made me a heel. That's like a strange thing, though, where you're successful by getting people to hate you. Yeah, you're like a great entertainer in that way. Yep, I made a lot of money doing that. I bet you did. Yeah.

So obviously, like you said, you made it quickly. They bring you in. When did they say, like, all right, we're going to up that contract now? How long did that take? Um, well, I had to, I had to prove myself for a year on TV. Uh, and I was able to make over a million that year. Uh, even though my guarantee was 75 grand, uh, you can make more money in WLB by being in the main events or, you know, selling merchandise, that kind of stuff. But so I proved myself to Vince and I said, listen, I want a better guarantee. My contract's up, I made a million this year,

I'd like to be a, and the highest guarantee they had at the time was a million dollars. Now don't get me wrong, Stone Cold Steve Austin still made 14 million a year. Yeah. Okay, because of merchandise and main eventing every pay-per-view. So you get paid more than your guarantee for that

so i was able to make a million dollars my first year so i got a guaranteed million uh for the next five years and uh so i i felt good about that and i i was able to make a substantial um substantially a much more than the million dollar guarantee but but uh i i had a very successful career and i i was able to entertain fans that i didn't believe i didn't even realize i was going to be able to entertain them i mean uh you know i did some stuff with stone cold sea boss where i wear a little mini cowboy hat and made myself look like an idiot you know and uh it's entertaining the fans loved it yeah yeah they loved it so you said these guys didn't really help you with the entertainment aspect that just came to you yeah you know what they they one thing they did is they

they showed me how to do an old-fashioned promo where the guy would interview me and you know you just stand there in front of the you know wwe symbol and you know he talks back and forth and that was it and i was horrible at that but you But when they started me on TV, I would do a promo where I would walk down the ramp and talk to the fans. But I was able to memorize those promos. Crazy thing is I didn't know how to ad-lib. That is something I had to learn down the road because I was so good at memorizing my lines that they had a joke in the back. Like they'd be watching me and they'd be reading the script word for word.

I'd be saying it word for word. They're like, this is unbelievable. He'll read whatever's on the teleprompter. Exactly, yeah. Just like Will Ferrell, yeah. So I didn't know how to improvise until I had to do those skits with Stone Cold and Vince McMahon where we're doing these funny pre-tapes. And Vince would be like, listen, I have this idea. And Stone Cold, I want you to start.

Kurt, I want you to chime in. Then I'll chime in. Then we'll naturally just let it end. I was like, wait a minute, Vince, you don't have a script. I was like, holy shit. I don't know how to improvise. He's like, don't worry. You'll get used to it.

And you know what? I did. Eventually I was able to. But that was the toughest thing I ever had to do. I would think that memorizing the lines would be tougher, but ad-libbing was really tough. In front of fucking 40, 50,000 people, that's not easy. Yeah, I know. Like, did you study any acting or anything no no

no so you just you have some sort of natural gene in there well i'm not a good actor to be honest with you but uh while you're hanging in there i was able to play my character pretty well yeah yeah that's that there's acting to that yeah give yourself some credit but from i so the contract was like 98 when it started? 98, 99? Something like that? Yes. The middle of 98, yes. All right.

I started in 99. But we're going to get to 03 to 06 where you really had some injury problems. But prior to 03, you know, you're doing this, whatever, four or five years. Yeah. Did you sustain any serious non-neck injuries during that time? I didn't have any problems with my neck. But anything else? No, I was healthy.

You know, I didn't have any serious problems. I had a couple of hamstring pulls, but nothing real serious until I wrestled Brock Lesnar. And I was on his back. I had him in a chokehold, and I was on his back. And he was in one side of the ring and he was going to run to the other corner and turn and back me into the turnbuckle. And when he went, he was running full speed and he went to turn and he didn't get turned around completely that I hit

the turnbuckle sideways and my head snapped really, really fast. And I heard a crack in my neck and I was like, oh, shit. And my right arm went numb. I couldn't feel it. And I couldn't raise it either. It didn't just go numb. I lost use of it. I was like wrestling with one arm dangling.

And so I knew that I'm going to have to have surgery. I knew right away. So we finished the match. And so listen to this. This is crazy. This is crazy., we finished the match and so listen to this, this is crazy. This is crazy. So we finished the match. I go to the doctor the next day and he says, listen, you have to have surgery. You broke your neck again.

And, uh, so I called Vince and I said, listen, Vince, I know I'm main eventing at WrestleMania, but I'm not going to be able to, I know it's in two weeks, but I have to have surgery. Uh, what, what do you want me to do? Cause I have the, I'm not going to be able to. I know it's in two weeks, but I have to have surgery. What do you want me to do? Because I'm the world champion. How do I drop this title? He said, well, all right, this is what we're going to do. At the next Raw, at our next TV, we're going to have you drop the title to Brock. And I said, well, I can't wrestle.

He said, well, I'm just going to have Brock hit his finish move on you. I was like, well, that's a pretty brutal finish move. He's going to pick me up over his head, spin me in the air and have me bump on the hardwood, on the wood. And so I said, okay, well, let's do it. So we, uh, we get to the day of the event and before I went down there to, it was in Pittsburgh, actually, ironically.

So I was going to drop the title to Brock Lesnar in my hometown. But before I went down, I met my neighbor who has down syndrome. His name's Johnny Seredi. And he was crying. And I was like, what's wrong? He said,

well, I was hoping to see you at WrestleMania because you and Brock are on the cover of this magazine. And it was a cable magazine. And it showed that we were main event in WrestleMania. And this poor kid was crying because he knew I couldn't wrestle. And I thought, you know what? I don't have to drop the title tonight.

I'll just tell Vince I'll wrestle at WrestleMania. Oh, my God. So I told Vince, hey, why don't I just, why don't we do something tonight to I beat Brock by cheating and winning? And what we did is we did this thing where I walked down to the ring and I got in the ring. And then I went in the corner and the lights went out. And my brother was underneath the ring. And I rolled out of the ring.

He got in the ring. And he got down in the same stance with his down, facing the turnbuckle where I was. And Brock came out, and Brock attacked him, thinking it was me. And he hits me at the finish. He goes to cover me, and he looks, and he's like, that's not Kurt. And then I sneak in, and I roll up and pin him. So I get a cheap win out of it, and we go on to WrestleMania. So that was my idea at events.

All because of your neighbor. Yeah, and it got me more heat from the fans, which they hated me even more. And I was able to please my neighbor by being able to wrestle WrestleMania. Yeah. And I didn't have function of my right arm at WrestleMania against Brock. Oh, my God. Yeah. That was the toughest match I've ever been through.

And what's crazy is at the end of that match, Brock did a shooting star press where you jump forward and you flip backward. Yeah. He was supposed to land on me. He landed right on his head. The same exact way I broke my neck. And I thought he, I thought he, he got knocked out. So now I'm, I'm covering him and I'm like, fuck, I'm going to have to win this match. I'm going to have to wrestle another match to drop this title.

And I said, Brock, kick out, please kick out. He kicks out. So the match is still alive. So I'm like, Brock, are you okay? And he's not saying anything. I'm like, Brock, are you okay? And he says, well, I think so. I said, okay, I'm going to lift you up. You think you can F5 me? That's his finish move. I said, I don't know. That's what he said i don't know so i lifted him up i said brock kicked me in the gut he kicks me in the gut he naturally gets me up f-fives me covers me and pins me so now brock has a connection my neck's fine i'm fine uh brock messed his neck up but um he he just he he tore a muscle he didn't do any damage to his neck his spinal cord and he had a concussion and he's flipping out backstage going crazy and they can't control him so i calmed him down and i got

him to go to the hospital and he he had a concussion but he had he had a torn muscle in his neck and he was fine so uh that match could have uh we could have ended up both in the hospital that night you know and i was just happy happy that Brock didn't break his neck too. So the point though, is that you're going to lose that. So now you can take some time off. Yes. To get a surgery. And recuperate from it.

And the problem was I had the surgery and I thought I recuperated from it, but four weeks wasn't long enough. What, what four weeks after next? What did they do? I rushed the doctor. I wanted to come back and you know i made him clear me so he clears me early so i go on and i wrestle again i break my neck again immediately and then i did it a third time so uh after the third time they they left time overall right well there's another time that I end up doing it. But actually, I broke my neck five times.

So the one I did the third time in WWE, I took six months off. I was still working. I was general manager. So I had a suit on. I was calling the matches, telling them who's going to wrestle who. And that was the time when I was able to recuperate fully. Did you do a surgery at the beginning of that too? Yes, I did.

What did they do? They just took out part of the disc that was blocking my nerves that were going down my arms. So you have nerves coming out of your neck. And you have discs in between each vertebrae. And when these discs get damaged, they slip, they slide to the side and the nerves get blocked. And that means you have no use of your arm. So it's real, something really little, just a minor adjustment, a little slip will completely shut your arm down. I mean, it's that, it's that bad. So, uh, they had to cut the disc

out that was blocking the nerve. And then I had to let the vertebrae heal because I broke vertebrae every time. Yeah. Now that's six months. Six months I took off, but I was still general managing. I was still on TV. At the end of that six months, though, you get cleared to start training again? Yes. Actually, I didn't do much training.

I was just, after six months, I went right back into it. How did your body feel physically? Oh, like shit. Yeah. But I got used to it. You know, after a while, when you're bumping for so long, you get used to it again, and then you're good. Then you're good to go.

And it probably took me two months to get to my old self. I mean, because this is WWE, not Olympic wrestling. You can work around your injuries, and that's what I did. Are you doing steroids and stuff like that? At one point in time, yes. Yes, I was. What kind? I was doing DECA at one point in time for my joints and all that.

Did that help with recovery? No, it didn't really help me a lot. I, I, I didn't find anything beneficial except I was a little more lean. You know, I had a little more muscle, a little lean, uh, but you know, it didn't do a lot for me. And you know, it's crazy. The only time I did it, I got tested and I got, I got fined And they suspended me. Yeah, yeah. They started testing, I think, 2004. Yeah. Oh, so like when baseball started having all the problems, Vince was like, fuck. Yeah.

Everyone taking on the first of the month. Yeah, Vince went through that steroid scandal back in the 90s. What was that? I don't know about that. All the wrestlers were taking steroids. They were getting from a doctor that vince hired of course uh but he claims he didn't know that the doctor was given selling the steroids his doctor was making bucco money though he he ends up he ended up going to jail because of it who do you remember the doctor's name i can't remember his name but there's there's the

documentary on vince mcmahon's out right now i I got to watch that. It's wow. It's an eye-opener. Yeah, that guy, I mean, he's been doing this forever. The dude is a machine. He lives and breathes it. Yeah. And you had a good relationship with him for the most part? Yeah, I had a great relationship.

Until the end of my first run. What happened, though, I understand. Thing is, I was being over understand. Thing is I was, I was being overworked and I was injured, injured quite a bit. I had a painkiller problem at a certain point in time. Yeah. And,

uh, I was able to get through that, but, um, he just, uh, I, I wanted to get out of the company because I felt like I was being worked too

hard. And, uh, so I wanted to get out of the company. So I decided that I, worked too hard and uh so i wanted to get out of the company so i decided that i i told vince i want to get out i said when uh it was in 2006 and uh my neck i had i broke my neck again after the six months yeah so i broke that at the beginning of 2006. uh i got i did an angle slam from the top rope on the back of my neck and broke my neck again. So I wanted to get out.

I just didn't want to do it anymore. And I figured the schedule was just too much for me. And I didn't blame Vince. I understood he wanted me to work full time and I just couldn't do it. And because I was new to the business, if I didn't have vince i understood he wanted me to work full time and i just couldn't do it and because i was new to the business if i didn't have 10 years experience i couldn't go part-time because a lot of his wrestlers didn't have more experience you know undertaker and you know the rock they could go part-time because they have more years of experience i didn't have that many

years so he couldn't make me part-time so i decided I wanted to quit and so I did and I ended up joining a smaller company called TNA wrestling okay and there they the reason why I went there is because he offered me a boatload of money and a reduced schedule where I had to work a lot less dates than I did in WWE but your body's also so banged up it's banged up but they It's banged up, but they gave me as long as I wanted, and I took three months off. That's not a long time, but I took three months off. I came back, but I never told Vince. Vince thought I was going to come back to WWE.

He said, I'll have a contract waiting for you in six months. Go take some time off. And I literally called TNA right when I left his office. I said, bring me down. This is how much I want. And so that ruffled some feathers with me, with WWE, because when I came back in 2017, they didn't utilize me the way they probably should have.

And I understood. I mean, I understand the business. Yeah, it's business. At what point, you had mentioned early on in this conversation, your sister, who obviously had a rough teenage run there and that threw her life off a little bit, but she later became an addict. When did you learn about that?

Oh, I was in WWE, and she just went through her third failed marriage, and she was feeling less than nothing at the time. All three of her spouses cheated on her. And she felt like she was worthless. And she got attached to, I believe, heroin. And she started taking that. And she lost her job. So I started to pay for her living expenses

and I later found out that that was going to heroin as well so at one point in time I decided to tell her listen you either go to rehab or I'm never talking to you and she decided not to so I never got a chance to say i love you to her because she ended up killing herself she overdosed so um and this was when i told her i wasn't going to talk to her anymore so it's a tough situation for me to talk about because of that specifically but um yeah she was she was you know she was just she was a great sister she was just a great sister. She was just really caring. Like, I'll give you an example what kind of person she was.

My first day of school, my family didn't have a lot of money. So my shoes, I had holes in them. And you could see them in the toe. Like, my friends were teasing me. And, you know, I was 11 years old, and I went home crying. I said, you know, my sister said, what's wrong? I said, my friends are teasing me because I don't have shoes with holes in them. I don't have new shoes, and it's the first day of school.

And she goes and grabs her new shoes. They were Nikes. They were women's shoes, but they were brand new. And she said, take mine. And, you know, here she is. She's, you know, she has a kid. She's pregnant or she was pregnant. She had a kid and she's given me her brand new shoes and she doesn't have any.

She's given them to me. And it was like, wow, you know, this is the kind of person she was. And it's just that, you know, she was always like that to me. And she always took care of me. And she was such a great sister. And to see her reduced to the level she was and to know that I said I was never going to talk to her again, man, I do regret that, you know.

But there's nothing I can do about it, you know. It's like the hardest situation. And I know a that, you know, but there's nothing I can do about it. That's like the hardest situation. And I know a lot of people listening and I can speak to the same thing, you know, especially if we have bigger families and stuff or close friends, like in some way addiction touches all of us. And obviously we'll get to how it ended up. It runs heavy in my family. Yeah, coming into your life with you.

But like at the time, that wasn't your battle yet. But I think the most difficult part whenever I hear these stories and whenever I've been around them is like, you know, sometimes like life pushes someone into that situation, right? Something that's out of their control. In this case, you have like a beautiful sister who's great and shirt off her back, shoes off her feet kind of person. And, you know, she gets beat up by three marriages that were so fucked up and she's forced to grow up at 14 with a kid. You know, like these are things that are enormous obstacles for people in life. Yeah, not normal. Not normal.

It's out of the norm, yes. Not normal. So eventually like things go wrong enough that, like you said, like our self-confidence is down and everything, and at some point the one decision happens where you turn to something to numb it. Yeah. And then the way our human brains work is unfortunately, like, we get addicted to that.

Right. But point being, the person doesn't change. The person is still the amazing person you know it's like a demon kind of takes over them and you're in this you know not to be crude about it in this case but you're like stuck between a shit and a fart because in a way you are if you support them no matter what you feel like you then enable it yeah right but then if you cut them no matter what, you feel like you then enable it. Yeah, you're enabling it. But then if you cut them off, you're like, oh, my God, am I pushing them into a corner where in this case, obviously, and so many of us know where this happens, like, you know, the worst thing happens. And it's like, I know it's clear you beat yourself up over that and stuff, but it's like, what are you supposed to do?

You're right i you know i did beat myself up uh but i realized you know there's really nothing i didn't do anything wrong and i think my sister would have done the same thing to me if i were in that situation so i know i did the right thing but it still sucks it feels bad you know yeah yeah now you as you alluded to already you you ended up at some point after all these litany of crazy injuries you get turned on to to painkillers when was the first time that happened you know what was the conversation i knew i spoke the first time i did it um i i broke my neck for the second time the first first time in WLB. That was against Brock Lesnar. A doctor introduces me to painkillers.

What specifically? Vicodin. Extra strength Vicodin. So they were 10s, not 5s. And the first one I took, I was like, wow. Like this woke me up. I feel energized. I don't feel the pain i feel like i'm invincible like that's that's the feeling i was getting and the unfortunate thing about

painkillers is after a while uh one doesn't work anymore yeah then you have to take two your body builds a tolerance and then two turns to four, then four turns to eight. I mean, before I knew it, I was taking 65 extra strength. 65. A day. And not to kill a horse. How about 10 horses?

Yes. And not only that, but I was getting injured quite a bit, which didn't help with the painkiller problem. When did you first take one? Do you remember? 2003, I believe, was right after WrestleMania, when I wrestled Brock.

And I knew I was hooked. You know what? I was okay. I mean, I was taking one every four or six hours as directed. But, you know, after about a month, it was like, they're not working anymore. They were working a little bit with my pain, but they weren't working with the high I was getting you know you get addicted to that high

yeah you know so it was like i'm not getting much of a feeling out of it anymore i'll take two two won't you know two is not much more than one so i started taking two then you know after a couple weeks it was like okay my i'm not feeling anything anymore give me three and i just kept adding up and adding up and before i knew it i mean at one point in time i would wake up in the morning sweating going through a draw okay like sick to my stomach and i'd have 20 painkillers waiting on the table right there i grab them throw them in my mouth chew them up and swallow them and i'd be okay for five or six hours and then i'd do it again how do you train with this i don't know i don't know i was functioning that's a crazy thing i was functioning the whole time did you uh so now at night i would

take uh soma along with the painkillers what's that uh what how do I explain it's a it's a sleep product like muscle relaxer muscle relaxer okay okay I take so much and I would pass out like literally from the from the drugs from the Vicodin and the Soma I would be messed up I would pass out like I would wake up with fully clothed with my winter jacket on you know because I would take messed up. I would pass out. I would wake up fully clothed with my winter jacket on because I would take my stuff before I'd come in my hotel room. I'd drink it in the car, a couple pills and my Soma and drink something. I'd go into my hotel room and I'd lay down and I'd pass out

just the way I was. Is there a point where you have your subconscious talking to you where you maybe don't admit it to yourself, but there's some little voice in the back of your head that says, uh-oh, I'm developing a problem? Yes. But I was saying, you know what? I'll deal with that when I get in real trouble. It's one of those, put it off. You're okay. You're good right now. I know you're taking five right now, but five's okay. Just as long as you don't take six. Then six will come. Oh, you're taking six, but it's okay.

Just don't take seven. Yeah, and it just kept going up and up. Are you in between marriages at this point? No, no. The thing is, I left the WWE, and I left where I wasn't taking painkillers anymore. What I was doing, though, I was taking a small dose of morphine so I wouldn't go through withdrawal.

This doctor gave me these little pills called MS-Contin. Wow. 10 milligrams, very small pills. And they would keep me from having withdrawal. So I take two of them a day, one every 12 hours. They wouldn't mess me up, just keep me from having withdrawal so i take two of them a day one every 12 hours they wouldn't mess me up just kept me from having withdrawal kind of like suboxone for her yes yes exactly but what i started doing when i went to tna because everybody drank alcohol there i never drank alcohol now i'm drinking alcohol all the time oh you got into that yeah like peer pressure kind of thing? Nope.

Just did it naturally. I want to get another high another way. Shit looks good. Yep, yep. So that got me four DUIs in five years. My life spun out of control. Were you on any painkillers? I lost my reputation.

No. None. No, but I was taking Xanax, and I was taking Soma, and I was drinking alcohol. I got four DUIs in five years. I was careless, careless reckless out of control irresponsible and uh i was at the lowest point in my life and i remember calling my wife my second wife and uh thing is like i literally when i go home uh from wrestling after a tour i go home and

at seven o'clock i drink a 12 pack of beer of beer, take a few Xanax and pass out. I wouldn't spend any time with my wife or my kids. It just got so bad out of control. I was going to lose my marriage. I mean, after my fourth UI, I called my wife from jail, and she said, I can't take this anymore. You either go to rehab or I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. I was like, fuck, I better go to rehab.

All right, so you're going but at that point because like you may be off painkillers but like you said you're drinking a lot not good i switched the drug yeah that's what it does and you're taking xanax i mean that's that's a hard drug taking that all the time and you said soma too was that muscle relaxers yeah so you're taking a cocktail no pun intended of stuff like every day. And when did you meet your wife again, 06? I met her on a movie set in 2009. And then 2010 on another movie set.

And I didn't have a date with her until 2012. So we met after I got divorced from my former wife. Okay. Okay, and it was in 2012. She was living in California, still doing movies, and I was in Pittsburgh. And I called her out of the blue because I remember her from the different movie sets that we did. And I told her that I got a divorce.

And she's asking me how everything's going because her family's from Pittsburgh. And so we ended up going on a date. And that started it. And I'd say probably within four or five months, we were engaged. Wow. And then it was quick. It was really quick. True love.

Yeah, yeah. And she's really mature. She was 23 at the time. I was, geez, 41. I'm 18 years older. Good math right there. Yeah, I know. But she's a love of my life.

I mean, the first one, I knew I wasn't sure when I got married. And I know why that didn't pan out. Why weren't, why'd you do it? I felt badly because we were in a relationship and I broke up with her, and I caused a lot of turmoil for her, and I felt guilty about it. And I almost wanted to make things right again by getting back with her and trying to make it work. But I knew the whole time.

I was like, you know, my brother Eric was even like, hey, Kurt, I have the getaway car in case, you know, at the wedding you want to. But he was serious. Like, they all knew I was unsure about it. And I should have never went into it. It was the wrong decision. And we ended up having kids.

How many kids did you have? We had two kids. Okay. And unfortunately for them, they have to deal with a divorced family because of my decision, you know. Well, I mean, yeah. Hindsight's 20-20 on a lot of stuff but you know especially with women we make weird choices in life sometimes it is what it is it seems like you got it right on on the second i did i did which is good and so giovanna your second wife that's she's the one who when you were at your lowest moment you called when you

were like in jail for DUI or something. Yeah, very strong-minded woman. And she said, listen, I'm not sticking around for you. I'm trying to keep the timeline right in my head, so I'm sorry if I'm off here. Were you back on full painkillers at that time, or was that where it was just the Xanax, Soma? That was just the Xanax and Soma. Okay. Was there a point where you went back to Vicodin?

No, I even had knee surgeries and the doctor prescribed me Vicodin and I gave the prescriptions to my wife. Okay. And she MF'd the doctors. What the fuck are you doing? So wait a minute. You were taken up to 65 Vicodin a day in maybe like 07 06 something like that yeah okay even though you changed and didn't do the right thing you went to other drugs

you technically just stopped that yeah yeah i went through a draw bad what was that but but what happened was this doctor tells me hey get off of the painkillers. Don't get on anything else. Just drink warm milk is what he told me. He said that will help you feel better. I mean this. So I'm doing this. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Like after four days. So I call my doctor and I'm like, the WWE doctor told me to drink milk, but it's not working. He said that he's fucking crazy. He said, come to me. I'm going to give you a drug that's going to help you. It's the MS cotton where you're going to give you a little small dose of morphine. So that's when, you know, when that, that all happened, that occurred after that. So that at least we knew off that, but you just replaced it with other things.

And the result, the end result for you is still the same. You're out of it constantly. You're using throughout the day. Is a lot of the memories of those years a little blurry? Yep. Yep. Unfortunately, my third kid, that's my oldest kid to my second family, I missed a lot of her childhood. Is that Kira? Yep. Kira. Yeah. Yeah? Yep Kira I'm making up for it now But I did miss a lot of her Early years When she was a baby

When she was 4, 5, 6, 7 years old So she's now 14 But when you met your second wife You were Like literally when you met her You were in the middle of having these problems too Yes So she just always knew you she knew she knew it was coming with the territory um you know what but when i first met her i kind of hid it hid it from her because i would stay up

late until she fell asleep and then i started pounding the beers and i would drink them then and then i would throw a couple of some on my mouth and pass out so i did it when she was sleeping but after a while i got comfortable with her started doing it seven eight nine o'clock at night and i'd just pass out yeah i'd be on the couch and you know i would see pictures of myself my wife took pictures just so i'd feel ashamed because that's that's how she is she's gonna you know make tell me like it is and i would have a dip in my mouth and i it'd be like halfway out and i'd be like you're out of it yeah i was like holy shit like i don't remember that but you know it happened so

you know i i made myself look like a real fucking idiot in front of my wife but well it's also because like again it it wasn't like you just decided to do that one day though like you're you literally broke your neck fucking five times yeah and a doctor's trying to help you because the dealing with that like i can't even fathom that you know yeah you know the crazy thing is I had this system. I was such an organized addict. I had this system where I was going to 12 different doctors, okay? And they were prescribing me medication, 120 pills. How much was it?

Six a day times 30 days, 180 pills. So every month I was getting 12 doctor's prescriptions. Now I had to go to 12 different pharmacies. What about insurance? Okay, well, screw the insurance. I had money, so that wasn't a problem. All right, so I had 12 doctors making me 12 different prescriptions.

And I had to make sure I had to go to 12 different pharmacies because if I crossed over and went to went to the same pharmacy they catch me and you get in trouble to have you know two scripts at one pharmacy oh yeah yeah so I was very well organized and so I was getting about 180 that's 12 geez about 2,000 pills a month so I was getting these from the doctors and going to the pharmacies and getting the different pharmacies.

But now, today, you can't go to a pharmacy, to a different pharmacy, because they're all in connection with each other now. That's how I know it. Yes, yes. So back then, it was Wild West. So I was able to get away with it but not only that but i was still i was buying 500 illegally from mexico oh my god so that's another 500 pills

and so i was taking 2500 a month 500 buying 500 per month from mexico yes yes so I was getting the twelve prescriptions plus the 500 pills and I was I was eating all of them and this is when we're talking about Vicodin yes okay extra strength tens not fives yeah you ever seen like any of those documentaries or or read any of the books on like the Sackler's and whole thing? No, no. So they're the family that was in charge of Purdue Pharma, which basically invented OxyContin and put it on the street. It is – because, you know, it's modern history. This isn't long ago, right?

It is wild to read about what they did to normal people, people who – Did they know that this was addictive? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's all been – what was that maybe you would remember this alessi but they got sued like they had to settle with the united states government for what can we google it sackler settlement with with the government for like billions of dollars and it's not like they should be in prison what they did because like we sit here and righteously yell at like the cartels in Mexico for the shit they do. They're the ones doing it legally.

They're doing it with just, you know, a company name on their door. That's the only difference, you know. And so you see this and unfortunately, and it sounds like this is similar with your case. So many doctors got very, I don't know, like liberal with how they would hand out these prescriptions. Like, oh, you need some painkillers? Here you go. And unfortunately, they enabled it. got very i don't know like liberal with how they would hand out these prescriptions like oh you need some painkillers here you go and unfortunately they they enabled it yeah we we have the we have the article right here go up so as the nation continues to grapple with the opioid epidemic the sackler family has agreed to pay six billion to families and states as part of an agreement to

wind down purdue pharma wind it They're going to let them do it nicely. The maker of Oxycontin in exchange to Sackler family would be immunized from future civil liability claims. Oh, wow. Now, I think I might be remembering this wrong, so people correct me in the comments. I think some of this, the government got so much backlash that there are still some open cases now. And, you know, hopefully-

There should be. Yeah. But you're like a living example of like the downstream effects of that again it's not like you went out to the club one night and said oh let me party with oxycontin that's not how this went you know i got it from a doctor yeah right you got it from a doctor to treat injuries which is what it's supposed to be for but it just got got out of control so you have that low moment with your wife where she's like, you either got to get help or this is it, you know?

Yeah. She said, you either go to rehab or I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. And she was serious. What year is this? That was, gosh. 15 or 16? 13. Okay.

Yeah. About a year after we got married. And so you went to rehab. What was that like? Oh, fucking horrible. The first seven days was just withdrawal. And I don't know if you've ever been through withdrawal, but it's the worst experience I've ever experienced.

It's the reason why I don't take them anymore. I don't ever want to have that feeling again. What was it? Can you describe it? Okay, you're throwing up and shitting your pants at the same time. You're hot and cold at the same time. Your skin's crawling. You don't

feel like you have any insides. You don't feel like you have any organs in your body. You feel like you're hollow. Your skin is just, if you touch it, it just kills you. So it's just all these different symptoms going on at the same time. You're sweating your ass off. And it's just the most uncomfortable feeling I could possibly even throw at you. I don't even know any other way to tell it.

But it's excruciating pain 24-7 for seven days. Seven days. Yeah. Does it feel like time's stopped? Like it doesn't feel like seven days? Yes, and that feels like forever. It feels like this has gone on for years. And you can't sleep, so you're awake the whole time.

You know what? Just to let you know, it's been 11 years since I took a painkiller. And there's a reason for that because I don't ever want to go through that experience again. But are you – I mean – I can't forget it. That's probably a good thing, that part, that you can at least relive that type of feeling. I've heard some of my friends who had battles with opioid opioid addiction and stuff like they've said the same thing it's like you get that devil out of your body and you're like i never want to go through that exorcism again no but you know are you is

it like one of those things where you're in this horrible pain which is also like also ironic because you literally did your whole career in insane pain and were able to get through it, and yet this is the worst thing you battle. Are you just thinking about your family in there, like I'm going to come out and be better for them? Yeah, yeah. I don't want to just do it for me. I want to do it for my kids.

I took so much away from them, and I felt obligated to get clean because I literally missed so many moments with my wife and my oldest girl, Juliana. Guys, did you say Kira last time? Yeah. Okay, no. The oldest one is Juliana.

Got it. For my second marriage, yeah. Kira's the oldest one, period. From your first marriage, yeah. But what was I saying? You were saying you were thinking about the time you lost with your family. Yeah, yeah. Just losing all those moments with my

daughter juliana and my wife giovanna um it's sad because you know i remember when when i came home after i was in jail and my wife was crying and she's she was so angry at me and she just kept saying uh you know how could you do this how could you do this? How could you do this to our family? Why are you so addicted? Why can't you just stop? And it was like, I want to, but I can't. I would do anything to be able to do it. And she was like, then do it.

I'm like, it's not that easy. And so she's like, well, you need to go to rehab. And I said, you know what? I'm going. I'm going to go to rehab. And you know and so she's like well you need to go to rehab and i said you know what i'm going i'm gonna go to rehab and you know what the whole time i was in rehab i was so nervous that i was gonna fuck up when i got back out uh that's all that tormented me even after the withdrawal where you're like i don't want to feel like him i was like you know what you're still gonna fuck up you're gonna go back to it and i was so scared to go out of rehab. I didn't want to leave. Well, aren't you also, because now you're physically in pain.

Yeah, yeah. Right? I mean, obviously. Because you're feeling everything now. Feeling soreness and, you know, the scars and the, you know, the injuries that occurred with my body was, you know, I was feeling it. Yeah, definitely. Because when I was taking the painkill know, I was feeling it. Yeah, definitely. Because when I was taking the painkillers, I couldn't feel any pain.

Right. You know, I felt like I was 100% healthy, even though I wasn't. But, yeah, I just felt so like I betrayed my wife. And it really hit me hard. And I knew that I needed to get clean for them, for my wife and my kids. And so I didn't have a choice. What did your mom and brothers say about all this? Where were they during this?

Well, considering that most people in my family have had addictions themselves, they didn't say a lot. My mom just kept asking me if I'm okay. She never, you know, you would think that your mother would be the one that, you know, would say, listen, you got to, you know, play hardball with you. Say, listen, I'm not going to talk to you

if you continue to do this. I said that to my sister. My mother never said that to me. And I think it's because all mothers don't ever want to have to tell their kids that. But I think if she would have told me that, I think I probably would have listened to her. But she never did.

And I don't know why. Did you ever think, like, when did your sister pass away, Leanne? That was in 2004. Okay. So that was right after you initially started taking painkillers. So maybe you don't even realize, you know, that's like an issue yet. Well, when she died, my brother Eric called me. And I just got done wrestling at a house show, an unteladay show.

And I had the most important match of my career coming up the next day. It was a one-hour Ironman match against Brock Lester. And my, who was it? Wait a minute. Who are we talking about? Well, we were talking about your sister. My sister. And when she was.

When she died. When she died in 04 and your brother called you before Lesnar. My brother, my brother Eric calls me the night before. I just got done wrestling at a house show at a night televised show. I'm getting ready for the biggest match my career the next day. My brother Eric calls me and says, hey, listen, your sister again just died with heroin overdose. And I was devastated. I remember I grabbed about 30 pills. I looked up at the ceiling and I threw him in my mouth and I chewed him up and

swallowed them and I passed out. I didn't wake up till four o'clock in the afternoon. The WWE is trying to get a hold of me to tell me they're trying to get me hold of me all day long to tell me I don't have to show up for TV. I could go home and plan a funeral for my sister. And I remember when I woke up, I called Vince and I told him, Hey, um, okay, thank you. I think I'm going to go home and I looked up at the ceiling again and I said Liam what do you want me to do and all I could hear is

do it for me so I called Vince and I said listen I'm going to wrestle I want to do it for my sister and I went and wrestled and what's crazy is it was the greatest match of my career I don't know how or why but what was going on in my mind at that particular time.

But I had the greatest match of my life the day after my sister died. And I'm not sure why. I don't know if it was just like me wanting to do it for her or an extra, you know, it gave me extra strength because I you know gave me extra strength because you know you know she was she was up there rooting for me I don't know what it was but I had the greatest match of my career against Brock Lesnar and it was a one-hour Ironman match which is the most difficult match you can have why is that because it's a long yes it's an hour long very few matches very few

matches go 30 minutes, 20 minutes. Usually they're around 10, 15 minutes. Yeah. This is one hour. Now what? So I didn't realize it was already that bad in 04 when she died, like you're popping 30 pills just to go to sleep. So there's, there's not the thought in your head like, Oh shit. And I'm telling her, I'm not going to talk to you until you get clean. So you don't have a hypocrite yeah you don't have that realization that there's a hypocrisy there so now fast forward like a decade or so later when you're going through this at your low moment are you

thinking back to like that same thing because your wife offers to or says like i'm going to take this away and you're like oh my god that's the same thing I had to give to my sister. Like, I know that there's only two possibilities of how this ends. Right, right. Yeah, definitely. I felt obligated to my wife, definitely. I know the way they say it, yeah. But you did it.

Yeah. And now you're present with your family and everything. Yeah, you know what? I still feel guilty about it. I mean, it's one of those things that you look back and you go, man, why, why the fuck was I so messed up back then? Why was I thinking the way I was thinking? I had this beautiful wife and we have four beautiful kids and it was not

necessary, but you know, then I think about, okay, you were working your ass off. They were overworking you. You were getting injured all the time. You didn't have anything to make you feel better but these pills. And so I understood why I did it. And, you know, having an understanding makes me be able to have peace with what I was able to do. Because it makes me realize, okay, I'm human. And we all make mistakes.

And sometimes we make some really drastic mistakes, but it was for a reason. I was having a lot of pain and I wanted to relieve the pain. And then after a while, I just wanted to get high. It turns you into a druggie. And that's the hardest thing to get through. That's when you start going through withdrawal and where it becomes difficult.

And it's really difficult to come clean that way. But you're also, you know, you're this larger-than-life figure. You know, literally. Like, you're an athlete. People, we talked about earlier, people, like, look up to you and everything. And there's, I got to think in the back of your mind, like, part of that, the show goes on. Like, I got to keep doing this and whatever I got to do to do that is because you are Kurt Angle. You're tough. Like these kids got to see you come out and know that you're not

affected the same way. You're right. You're right. I felt that way. And I felt like, yeah, I want to give these kids, these people have a great show and I want to represent my family. And I want to, you know, I want to show that there's, you know, I'm not having any problems and everything is cool with me. And there was a lot of hiding during that situation, but, um, I did want to make a lot of people proud and, and by taking those pills, they were enabled me to get through the pain. So I was able to do it, but it got so bad to where I was basically like getting myself high yeah wasn't about the pain anymore it was about how high i could make myself feel are you a religious guy too yeah have you always been that way yes yeah grew up as a catholic um my parents you know we went

did the ccd thing got got communion, confirmation, everything. Crazy thing is, I'll tell you this, when I went to get married with my second wife, I went to my church, and this kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I went to my church to get them to approve that I could get married, and I could get married in their church. And they asked me if I'd take envelopes from them. And I said, no, not now. And they said, well, we can't do it for you.

If you'd what? Take envelopes where you donate every week. They give you envelopes. Oh, they – Because I wanted to take an envelope so they wouldn't let me get married. They wanted pay to play. They wanted pay to play, yeah. The Vatican would never.

And I was like, what the hell? I never heard it. So I went to another church, and the guy's like, that's bullshit. The priest says, we'll marry you. So my own church deceived me. No, I've always believed in higher power. I believed in God. I believed in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I actually credit him to getting me clean. I did a lot of praying during that time. And yeah, I've been a big believer. And that's how we're raising our kids. We go to church every Sunday. They go to CCD. We have to make it very important that it becomes part of their life. And that's like a source of strength to you to this day, obviously.

Yes, definitely. That's great. Well, you've had a real, real journey. You packed many, many, many, many decades. 100 years into 55. That's what I'm saying. I think it's more like 200 at this point. Like you've really packed it in. But today you're helping, I understand, like a lot of addicts as well and advising them on how to get rid of these things. I've been really open about it. And, you know, a lot of people commend me on that because I've always wanted to help others.

I don't want people to have to go through my situation. And I know they're going to. But I also want them to know there's hope. There's a chance for you there's hope and there's a chance for you to get clean and to live a regular life, you know, and that, uh, you know, I have, I had somebody that, uh, wants me to do a cameo for them and it's because, um, they feel less than nothing and they have to have alcohol because if they don't have alcohol, they have no meaning in life. It's like women,

they've reduced themselves to the point that alcohol is the only thing in their life that they want. That's what they're, they're worth, uh, is drinking alcohol. It's like, where, where are you? Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have a family? Do you have a job? Like, is it really that bad that the only thing you look forward to is drinking alcohol? Like, there's got to be something else in your life that, you know, that makes you intrigued, not just drinking alcohol every night. And it was like, wow, those are the people I want to reach out to and say, listen, there are other things out there. There are things that will make you worthy or make you feel worthy of your life. Whether it's a job or a relationship or whatever it is, or it's your faith in God.

You got to have something that makes you feel valuable. Not just, I love the drug. That's all I live for, is a drug. It's like, man, that's not the right way to go about life. Well, that is something you were really lucky with. You had an amazing family and everything, and you have the legacy of who you are, so there is a lot to go to there.

But to your point, I feel horrible for the people who are in addiction where they feel like they don't, just like that, where they don't have anything. Yeah, and they think that's the only thing they have, that that's what they're living for. And I'm not going to lie to you. I felt the same way. I was like, please don't take my pills away from me.

I remember going into rehab. First thing I did is I took a handful of pills through my mouth, and I said to my wife, take me to jail. It's from a movie. I forget what movie it's called. Yeah, it's Goodfellas. Yeah, Goodfellas. Take me to jail like you know it's from a movie i forget what yeah it's good fellas yeah good so take me to prison yeah so i popped 30 pills before i went in there and i paid the price when i went through a draw though oh shit yeah yeah and what's the what's the latest with your pain that you deal with and everything we were talking off camera

before but like you know it's not like all these injuries go away you know no i have a lot of pain uh none in my knees my knee replacements worked extremely well that's great i i couldn't couldn't ask for anything better than these uh but my back is still not that great my shoulders aren't that great my neck is a mess uh so i do a lot of managing of the pain of the pain. Uh, I do a lot of exercises, um, you know, neck stretches and, uh, my exercise where I do the chicken thing to get the flexibility in my neck. Um, I do stimulation. I do anti-gravity. Stimulation.

I stretch. I do yoga. Uh, muscle stem where you, uh, put stems on your, it's electric, like electrodes through your. Oh, I've seen that yeah like trainers yeah yeah athletes do it yeah when they're injured yeah so i do stimulation i do uh anti-gravity where i hang upside down from my lower back i do a lot of yoga and stretching are you doing yoga yeah but you know what i i can't really lift weight so that's that's the

only thing i can do i can't even can't even run because of my knees so you know my cardio is limited and my weightlifting is limited so i try to do core training and yeah i do the bike the airdyne in particular but um i do whatever i can that makes me feel better you know and i do a lot of maintenance every day it's you know I the stretches I have to do for my neck and my you know I have to stretch in a doorway get my pecs because my neck goes forward so my neck I lost the arch of my neck my neck is straight now and it's because I have poor posture I'm leaned forward so I have to get my shoulders back so my head goes back and so I have poor posture. I'm leaned forward. So I have to get my shoulders back.

So my head goes back. And so I have to do a lot of stretching that way. So my posture stays normal because that takes the alleviation of the pain off my neck when I'm not leaning forward, when I'm back. You were saying that after you went on Joe Rogan show last year, though, people were reaching out, trying to get ideas on what to do with your neck. Yeah. I had doctors calling me, uh, reaching out to me and my manager. Um, uh, you know, I had a doctor that wanted to do our artificial disc replacement. I think I told you about that. Yeah. Can you, that was off camera. Can you explain that to people? Uh, yeah, they wanted to put, they wanted to take the discs out of my neck and put new discs in rubber discs and uh that that would that would uh alleviate the the problems i was having with my discs because there are i

have a lot of discs that have a lot cut out from the surgeries i've had where they were uh blocking the nerves so i have a little bit of a disc in in each vertebrae between each vertebrae instead of a full disc because i had so many of them cut out part of them cut out so putting those discs in would would alleviate the pain in my neck the problem is my neck fused entirely so I don't have any more discs anymore I just have bone in my neck so they're all fused together yeah so there's no more discs they're all fused in with the bone so there's nothing i can do there's no surgery there's no uh rehab method i just have to deal with the pain and uh i've tried stem cell it doesn't work i'm gonna try peptides here i heard they might have they might

have uh come to good use but um i i really my options are really well hang in there because you're otherwise in really good shape. Well, your technology, they're probably going to come out with some where I could get a new neck. Right. Yeah, I'm feeling like the next five to ten years might get a little weird. Yeah, they got shoulder replacements, knee replacements, maybe they have a neck replacement. Yeah, we're going to have a whole new you except your head.

Your head will still be there. I need a brain too. I don't have much of that. Did you get, like, a lot of concussions when you were doing WWE? Yeah, yeah. One time, one night, I don't remember. That's not good. I had a triple threat match with The Rock in Triple H,

and he hit his finish move on a table, an announced table. And the problem is the table gave too early because it was Jimmy and it was supposed to break on purpose when he put me through the table. But he went to do it, and the table collapsed, and I went straight down on my head. And my head hit the concrete, and I was out. I mean, I was snoring. I was out.

And Triple H was trying to wake me up, slap me in the face. So they wheeled me backstage. Listen to this. This is crazy. So I'm backstage. Okay, i'm having a concussion vince wants me back out oh my god so he's like somebody get him up let's go we gotta get him back there and like and they sent me footage of this like it's crazy but um that's good vince wants me to get back in the ring, and so he has his daughter, Stephanie, carry me, or assist me back to the ring, so she's holding me, and she's getting me back to the ring,

and now she has to tell me what to do, because I have no idea what I'm doing in the match, because I'm out of it, I don't even know I'm there, so I get to the ring, and I'm at the edge of the ring, and she says she says listen the rock's gonna come and hit the ropes you have to grab his foot grab it and pull him out of the ring so I go okay so rock hits the ropes I grab him he falls I pull him out of the ring then she goes pick him up like like I should know this and I pick him up and I look at her she's like throw me to the steps so I throw him the steps I'm like I look at her she's like get in the ring so I get him up, and I look at her, and she's like, throw me to the steps. So I throw him to the steps, and I look at her, and she's like, get in the ring. So I get in the ring, and she's like, oh, my God.

So Triple H is calling me through the whole match. He's leading me through the whole match. Thank God he was in there because I would have never finished. But that was – I don't remember anything about that night. Yeah, I can imagine. I woke up at 4 in the morning in a hospital bed i was like what happened they said well you got a pretty bad concussion yeah i said what happened in the match i don't remember any of it they said well you finished i was like oh okay i'm glad i finished

how many concussions would you would you estimate you sustained that i know of probably four and then if you had to guess that you don't know of? I have a bell rung a couple of times, so probably seven, seven or eight. Yeah. Your head feel okay these days? Yeah, you know what? I am forgetting a lot of stuff. My memory used to be really sharp.

I don't know if it's from the concussions or from the drugs, but it might be from both. Good. My memory is nearly as good as it used to be. My wife even says, you don't remember this from last week? I'm like, no. Yeah. She's like, oh. Got to watch that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of good research. I don't know if I'm getting Parkinson's. I don't know. Well, let's not talk this stuff into existence. I don't want to speed up the process.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a lot of good tools to be able to help with that these these days i had this amazing woman in here louisa nicola recently i think i connected you with her right learn so she is a neuro performance expert i had her in for episode 230 so you ever see the show billions by any chance no okay well there's a woman in the show that basically like she does the same thing that woman wendy rhodes does in the show that basically like she does the same thing that woman Wendy Rhodes does in the show. But she works with everything from like professional athletes to high level executives where she creates and I'm going to fuck up the terms here. She's going to kill me. But like new neural pathways for them to basically like expand their brain matter, if you will, and perform at a higher level. But she does everything down to the blood work and reading

all different variables that like regular doctors don't read and stuff i want to show you some of her things afterwards because her specialty is actually like working to end dementia and and alzheimer's and stuff which is obviously where the brain goes if it has deterioration are we close to getting a cure for that or is it i'm not the guy to ask that you know it it definitely feels still very touch and go that's that's that's a tough one there but i i know like people like her are working on it and what's what's great is that she's coming at it from like outside the pharma industry you know just trying to invent a drug to throw at it right away she's coming at it from a performance standpoint.

So I feel like, you know, in a perfect world, we get some sort of mix there where the industries work hand in hand and eventually get something because that is a particularly terrible disease because people forget who they are. Yeah, yeah, it is scary too. You know, I'm starting to get certain symptoms, but, you know, I've been through a lot. You have. I know I fried my brain with drugs and I fried my brain with concussions.

So, you know, I still feel fairly normal. You look great. Well, I don't feel great, but I'm glad you said that because it makes me feel good about what I'm doing for myself. Yeah. But it's just difficult. You know, every day I wake up, it's like, oh, I got to get out of bed. And it's like once I get up and I'm moving, I'm good. But it takes a while for me to get moving.

And you don't have that thought about like, you know, one Xanax or whatever. No, no. You know, I've been clean for like 13 years. Yeah. So it used to come up, but, you know, it gets better in time. So after a while, you don't miss it. You know, it just becomes a habit. I'm not going to take it anymore.

It's fine. So I'm okay. I don't get tempted anymore. I used to, but I don't miss it you know it just becomes a habit i'm not gonna take it anymore it's fine so i'm okay i i don't get tempted anymore i used to but i don't get tempted anymore what made you want to do the documentary and until you're laid all out there um you know what i got approached for that and uh it was by a a young producer in hollywood name was Alex Perry. He was a big wrestling fan and he, he heard, he knew my story. And so he said, listen,

I'd love to do a documentary on you. And, uh, you know, he's like, we can make a lot of money. And I thought, okay,

I have some money by the way, I didn't get a penny for it. So I didn't make any money. But, um, the reason why is because WWE bought it. So he, he sold out the WWE when he probably should have shopped it around to Netflix.

So WWE got the documentary, and they aired it on Peacock, which isn't worldwide. And I wanted it to reach all over the world because I wanted to help people with addiction. So, um, but unfortunately the WWE, all they did with it was, uh, showed it on Peacock, which is fine. And then they gave it to A&E to air.

And then A&E is put it on YouTube. So now it's, you can look at it for free on YouTube and I didn't get a dime for it. And, uh, I know, I know people made money from it wwe i know alex might have made some money but i didn't make any well i will say the documentary was excellent and he did a great job yes it tells and like you're really raw in there as well i

thought you were today too by the way i really appreciate you thank you walking us through all this stuff but like it is such an inspiring story and i hope that through the biopic you talked about earlier that they're that they're working on that can reach a lot of people and become a pop culture phenomenon yeah reach the whole world yeah that'd be so cool but kurt thank you so much for doing this man thank you man you know what i know this is three hours but it seems like an hour that's that's what i want to hear flew by quickly it It did fly by. You're a great storyteller, so that helps. Thank you.

Thank you. So do you. Also, Lauren, thank you so much for hooking us up. I appreciate that. And we will have your links down in the description so people can donate on KurtAngle.com. KurtAngle.org. KurtAngle.org. We got that right in the description.

And they can donate to help fundraise for the 2028 Olympic wrestling team. That would be awesome. Thank you so much. All right.org. We got that right in the description. And they can donate to help fundraise for the 2028 Olympic wrestling team. That would be awesome. Thank you so much. All right, cool. Thank you. And we'll do it again sometime. All right. Sounds good.

Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. It's a huge help. And also, if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our

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