Kurt Angle has admitted he initially didn’t believe his character would work as a villain in WWE, and he questioned Vince McMahon when the idea was pitched to him.
Speaking on the Dos and D Show, Kurt Angle recalled the moment Vince McMahon explained that his babyface status as an Olympic gold medalist might work against him.
“Vince McMahon wanted to use The Rock as material for me, being who I was. He tried to push him as a baby face really hard, and the fans were chanting ‘Die Rocky Die.’ They didn’t like him because [Vince] pushed The Rock as a white meat/nerdy type of baby face. That’s what Vince did with me, but he knew it was going to fail.
In other words, they weren’t going to cheer for me. They were going to boo me cuz I’d make them sick to their stomachs. Because of what happened with The Rock when he tried to be a babyface and it made him a heel. Vince knew that would do the same for me, and he wanted me to be a heel.
I was like, ‘Vince, I’m an Olympic Gold Medalist for the United States of America. I said, ‘I don’t think these fans are going to boo me’.”
Angle explained that the character he ended up playing, one who preached moral superiority and held himself higher than the crowd, was purposely constructed to provoke heat.
“They wanted the character to be [like] ‘uh, you know what, I like this guy, but there’s something off…’ and he just explained that to me. I would always talk about the three I’s, but I wouldn’t always portray that. So it was like I was a hypocrite, and that’s what the character was.”
When Did Kurt Angle Debut In WWE?
Kurt Angle made his official WWE debut at the 1999 Survivor Series on November 14. Prior to that, he had been working in WWE’s developmental system since his signing with the company in 1998.
Angle had a meteoric rise during his early days in WWE, as he captured the WWE Championship less than a year after his debut, defeating The Rock at No Mercy 2000 on October 22 to win his first title in the company.
