Kurt Angle and Cody Rhodes recently spoke with Justin Barrasso to promote their upcoming steel cage match at Friday’s WrestleFest XXI event in Waterbury, CT. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Angle: “You usually don’t get this kind of attention for an independent match, but Cody and I have received a lot of attention for setting up our own program,” explained Angle. “That’s all because of Cody’s resilience. He didn’t let it rest, he kept coming up with ideas and concepts. Cody is a highly-driven individual, he has a lot of goals, and they exceed where he was in WWE. The way he’s promoted himself post-WWE has been nothing short of incredible. He makes everything mean something, and not just in the ring, but as an individual.”
Rhodes: “Sometimes, when you work with the younger stars, and this isn’t a knock on anybody, it feels like you’re dancing,” noted Rhodes. “When you get into a match with Kurt Angle, and it doesn’t matter how old he is because he’s just as good as he ever was, and perhaps even better on some nights. Kurt is a wrestler’s wrestler. He hits hard, he ties you up tight in ways that are uncomfortable and in ways that, if he wanted to, it could be over right then and there. That’s the kind of wrestling I learned when my dad was training me during the time I first broke into the business. My dad had some of the guys roughhouse me at his school when I was in the ring as a teenager, and working with Kurt reminds me a lot of that. He’s an Olympic gold medalist. A lot of people always wonder the degree of reality involved in pro wrestling. There is a pretty high degree of reality with Kurt Angle, and you’ve got to keep up.”
Angle: “Cody can do it all,” said Angle. “I always had my eye on him. I just can’t believe what he can do at his size. He’s deceivingly big—the kid has got to be 6’2”, probably 230 pounds, and he can wrestle like a heavyweight and move around like a cruiserweight. Seeing him do the springboard jump off the ropes, and moonsault off the cage, he is just so diverse as a talent. I always wanted to work with him, and I wanted to have at least one match with him. He was one of the top five guys in WWE that I had my eyes on to work with, and we were able to set this up as a best-of-three, and I’m very fortunate to be able to work with him.”
You can read the entire interview here.
