Kurt Angle Recalls WWE Hall of Fame Induction, Hardys ‘Stealing’ His Pyro

Kurt Angle recently looked back at his WWE Hall of Fame induction experience, including his pyro for WrestleMania 33 being “stolen” for the Hardy Boys. Angle discussed the experience on the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show and you can see some highlights below, courtesy of Wrestling Inc:

On his WWE Hall of Fame induction video: “Watching the moments I created for the WWE fans and being inducted into the Hall of Fame, it was a dream come true. It was the one thing that I actually wanted to do before I ended my career for WWE. Here it was, it came quicker than I thought it would. I thought I would wrestle first before I got inducted but I was okay with this either way. Being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame is a huge honor and I was very excited about it.”

On his WWE Hall of Fame speech: “They document everything so they’re recording you all day long, wherever you go and whatever you do. It was pretty cool. Did they write the speech for me? Hell no. I wish they would have. The crazy thing is all I wrote was thank yous, that’s all I had down and they told me not to thank Vince because Vince does not like thank yous.

“He wants you to thank everybody else but him so I had the speech ready and five minutes before I go out there, the writers come to me and say ‘Hey, we need you to be entertaining. What do you have in your speech?’ I said ‘I just have a bunch of thank yous, I didn’t know you guys wanted me to be entertaining. You didn’t tell me.’ They said ‘well, we’re telling you now. What do you need for us to help you out with this promo? Is there anything we can get you to make it more entertaining?’ I was like ‘Um, give me a couple of half gallons of milk, a cowboy hat, I’ll sing Sexy Kurt, I’ll sing the cowboy song that I sang with Vince McMahon and I will do a milk celebration at the end.’

“This was all put together in like three minutes. They literally got me the milk and the cowboy hat in like three minutes. Where do you get a little cowboy hat in an area, but they found one, it was crazy. It was almost like they were telling me they knew ahead of time when they came to me. It’s like they knew ahead of time I was going to ask for a cowboy hat because how is that possible to get a tiny cowboy hat in an arena where I’m going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame that night. It was ridiculous. I did put it together at the last second. I went out there, sometimes speeches are better in the last second, going off the cuff. It was a pretty damn good speech.”

On the Hardy Boys “stealing” his pyro at WrestleMania 33: “Yes, I was pretty pissed off about it too. When I was going out for WrestleMania to be acknowledged as a Hall of Fame inductee, I’m getting ready to go out there and Vince tells me ‘hey listen, we’ve got red, white, and blue fireworks for you. When you go out there point your fingers in the air and we’re going to have the fireworks go off and then we’re going to celebrate your Hall of Fame induction.’ So I go out there and I raise my hands and nothing goes off, no fireworks go off, I lower my hands and raise them again, nothing goes off.

“I came back from out of the arena to go backstage and I said ‘Vince what happened?’ He said ‘Well, unfortunately, the Hardy Boyz were winning the Tag Team Titles tonight and every World Title match has fireworks but theirs. So I called an audible and I stole yours and I’m giving them to the Hardyz because they’re on the segment after you.’ The Hardyz got the red, white, and blue fireworks, the bastards stole them from me.”