Kurt Angle says the best wrestling of his career didn’t happen in WWE, where he’s known for six world titles and Grand Slam champion status. It happened in TNA, where most American fans never saw it.
“To be honest with you, I had an incredible career in both WWE and TNA and I believe that I had a better career in TNA and, unfortunately, a lot of those WWE fans didn’t get to see it and I think that they would have seen my career,” Angle told OutKick Dropkick. “Now we have a lot of great TNA fans all over the world but here in the United States, it’s a far second place to, before AEW came around, but it was a far second place to WWE. But I would have loved for the WWE fans to see me wrestle in TNA.”
Angle arrived in wrestling with an Olympic gold medal already on his resume. In TNA, he spent nearly a decade compiling six world championships, two tag team titles and an X Division championship, building a body of work he says rivals or beats his WWE run.
For fans who only know him from WWE, Angle points to his matches against Samoa Joe and A.J. Styles as the ones worth tracking down.
“Any match with Samoa Joe or AJ Styles. It doesn’t really matter. My debut match against Samoa Joe at the pay-per-view, I think it might have been it might have been Bound for Glory, or right after it, but we had a banger of a match and I really enjoyed working with both of them. Joe was really physical and AJ was really athletic.”
He said Joe’s ground-and-pound grappling style meshed naturally with his own freestyle wrestling background, and that even when a younger Styles was flying around the ring, the two found a rhythm together.
Angle also won two King of the Mountain matches during his TNA years, a format built around fighters climbing to hang a title belt on a hook suspended over the cage, essentially a ladder match run in reverse. Asked whether he’s surprised WWE hasn’t adopted the concept, Angle said no rule is stopping them.
“I’m surprised it hasn’t already. WWE got really creative at a certain point in time where they were doing some really cool stuff. And it would be great advice to the WWE to use some of those things. I don’t know if they’re patented or not. I believe they aren’t patented, but you could always change the name and mix it up a little bit, make it a little different, but TNA was always very creative with their pay-per-views.”
Angle was inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame in 2013, joining Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Earl Hebner, Gail Kim, Abyss, Ken Shamrock, Awesome Kong, Raven, Traci Brooks, Rhino, Bob Ryder and Mickie James. TNA will add three more names to that class at its Bound for Glory pay-per-view in October: ODB, Amazing Red and Konnan.
