On the latest episode of the Kurt Angle Show and talked about No Way Out 2001 when he first began to use his submission finisher, the Angle Lock.
Kurt Angle stated that he decided to use that as his finishing move to stay true to his wrestling background and remain a threat amongst his competition.
Angle had this to say about using the Ankle Lock finisher:
“Well, it was me. I was, you know, being a shooter and having the history I did I wanted to come up with a submission hold that I could start using. I knew that Ken Shamrock used the Ankle Lock and he was gone doing MMA and I figured I might as well take that. You know, Ken Shamrock wasn’t upset about it, he actually was very cool about it. Taking his finish and using it helped me dearly. It made me a more credible wrestler and more dangerous.”
Kurt Angle also mentioned that using the Ankle Lock more often wasn’t specifically because the Olympic committee didn’t like them using the term “Olympic Slam”. Angle discussed that situation, as well as, Michael Cole finding out about the possible lawsuit by the Olympic Committee:
“That was the idea, I could give it to anybody, any size, it wouldn’t matter. It had nothing to do with the Olympic Slam getting changed to the Angle Slam. That was the Olympic committee that was threatening to sue us if we used the word Olympic because they own that word, and so I had to change the Olympic Slam to the Angle Slam. It’s kind of funny because when Michael Cole found out that the Olympic committee was upset, the next week on RAW he said Olympic Slam at least 15 times because he wanted to piss them off. He just kept saying it. It was hilarious.”
Kurt Angle also stated that his finisher was always supposed to be called the “Ankle Lock” to show respect to Ken Shamrock and Angle didn’t want to make it his own out of respect for Shamrock.
Credit to Kurt Angle Show and H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
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