Kurt Angle Talks About His ‘Shoot’ Wrestling Match With Brock Lesnar

– Kurt Angle recently appeared on Talk is Jericho (transcript via wrestlinginc.com), here are the highlights…

On His ‘Shoot’ Wrestling Match With Brock Lesnar: “I took him down once, he didn’t take me down at all, and it went 15 minutes. That’s pretty damn close.” Angle continued, “it was close. It really was. He had 90 lbs. on me, but I probably took him down into the ropes a good seven or eight times, but he used the ropes to [say], ‘hey, we’re out of bounds’ and that’s okay, but I did take him down once, he didn’t take me down at all, and it was really close. But, to me, Brock wasn’t the wrestler that I was.”

On Brock’s Skills as a Wrestler: “Brock, as good of a wrestler he was, he wasn’t that good of a wrestler. He was a big, athletic kid that knew one move, a double-leg. And that’s not a discredit to him, it’s just a fact that we wasn’t real technical as a wrestler. So I knew a lot of technique, and always knew how to wrestle big guys, especially guys like Brock, so it wasn’t an issue to me. Brock never really came close to taking me down that day because I knew what I had to do. I knew how to create angles on him and I had to make sure my hips were low and I had to make sure that my hands were in front of me, so he couldn’t wrap his strong-ass arms around my legs. I just knew how to keep him from scoring and I knew that I would eventually score on him and that’s what happened.”

On Feeling Could Have Been an Olympic Level Wrestler: “I didn’t kick his butt. It was a very close wrestling match. And the reason I won is because, and I know Brock doesn’t want to hear this, but Brock is a beast. I mean, anything he touches, he can turn to gold. He’s not just a beast. He’s a great athlete. He’s smart. If he would’ve stayed in the NFL, just another half a year, he would have been a 10-time all-pro. He was UFC [Heavyweight] Champion when he just tried that. When he comes to WWE, he’s WWE Champion when he tries that. He was NCAA [Heavyweight] Champion in wrestling. It’s like he wins everything.” Angle continued, “and if Brock would’ve learned, if he would’ve went beyond NCAAs and learned at the Olympic level, there’s no way in hell I would have beat Brock. He is that good of an athlete, but he just didn’t know wrestling like I did.”

On His Tough Enough Incident With Daniel Puder: “The day that I did that thing with the Tough Enough guys, Dan Puder and everybody, I couldn’t do five pushups. I broke my neck a couple of different times, as you know, and I was just getting over that and my strength in my upper body has suffered severely from those broken necks. Now, I broke my neck before the Olympics in 1996. That didn’t do so much damage to my neck as when I started breaking it… I broke it four times in two-and-a-half years in WWE. Yeah, it just kept happening over again.”

On Talking With Dana White About a Possible UFC Fight: “I did talk to Dana White in 2006 and 2010. I flew out and met with him both times. The issue was, first of all, we couldn’t get a starting date. He wanted me ready in four-and-a-half weeks in one fight, which was not going to happen. I thought that I needed three to six months, but I was in denial. I don’t have the strength I had before I broke my neck in 2003. And breaking them several times in that two-and-a-half year span, I didn’t help.”

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