Vince McMahon is never one to shy away from giving his true feelings on any subject. In a recent interview, Kurt Angle revealed how the WWE Executive Chairman reacted when he made a special request about his on-screen persona.
Angle joined WWE in 1998 after initially rejecting a multi-million dollar offer from the company following his 1996 Olympic Games gold medal success. Upon signing for McMahon’s promotion, the former amateur wrestler said he was not interested in character work. Instead, he wanted to let his wrestling do the talking.
On Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, Angle explained how McMahon made it abundantly clear that he needed to be versatile as a performer:
“When WWE signed me, I was really nervous about getting in front of the camera. I thought, you know what, I’ll just wrestle, these guys will just have me wrestle, because I didn’t wanna do the other stuff. Vince put me out there. He said, ‘You’re gonna f***ing sink or swim, but I’m gonna throw you out there. We’re gonna do a lot of s**t with you.’ I was like, ‘Vince, I don’t wanna do a lot of s**t. I just wanna wrestle!'” [42:50 – 43:13]
On November 14, 1999, Angle defeated Shawn Stasiak in his first televised WWE match at Survivor Series. He almost immediately became one of the company’s most prominent stars.
Vince McMahon changed Kurt Angle’s WWE mindset
Although he initially had reservations about portraying a larger-than-life character, Kurt Angle soon realized that he needed to stop taking wrestling so seriously.
The 2017 WWE Hall of Famer believes he could get away with making a fool of himself because everyone already knew how tough he was:
“The fans, I could do that kind of stuff because I was still a bada** in real life, so I was able to exploit myself a little bit and have fun,” Angle continued. [44:29 – 44:38]
The WWE legend also spoke about Vince McMahon’s reaction when he wore his gold medals around airports and restaurants following a backstage misunderstanding.
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Please credit Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw and give a H/T to Sportskeeda Wrestling for the transcription if you use quotes from this article.