On a recent episode of the Kurt Angle Show, WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle recalled his time in WWE developmental.
Angle discussed what the WWE developmental system was like back in the day, and the kind of training he underwent.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On WWE’s developmental when he signed: “Their developmental system back then was very primitive. What I mean by that was they didn’t have a lot. They had a warehouse a couple miles from the WWE headquarters. It was a WWE warehouse, a production building and they had a wrestling ring set up in there and what happened was Dory Funk Jr. signed a contract with WWE to do his Dory Funkin Dojo at the WWE headquarters. Tom Prichard was one of the coaches and that’s how I started and it was different. They brought in 12-15 guys. Edge and Christian were part of it. A kid named Steve Bradley, Glen Kulka, if anybody knows Glen he’s from Canada, pro football player. Matt Bloom, Baldo, there was a lot great talent that came there. Starting out you only trained five days, okay? You’re taking 300 bumps a day. It was brutal. I literally quit the first day because I was like ‘I can’t do this.’ I told my manager I can’t bump around like this. It’s like beating the s*** out of yourself, and he’s like ‘Just stay until the end of the fay and see if you can make it.’, and I did, but I was ready to walkout because it was like self-abuse.”
On the style of training he endured: “It was mainly all wrestling. Some conditioning things we did in the ring a lot of wrestling schools do that. But, for the most part it was technique and storytelling psychology. We would work out at the gym in the morning. We’d do our cardio and weightlifting. Then the afternoon and early into the evening it would go all the way through four or five hours we would train wrestling and the thing is I was only doing it five days a month. Then, I would go home and wait 25 days. But, what they did is they had independent shows after those five days they would have a couple independent shows back to back for day six and seven up in the Northeast near Boston, and that’s where we’d go to have our practice matches. We would go to these small independent shows that had 60-70 people. It was very humbling, but it was a good way for me to start. I really enjoyed doing that. The only thing is, I just wasn’t getting enough training. Because, being there for a week and then being home for three weeks, so I told them I said ‘Listen, I need more training.’ So, what they did is they decided, they partnered me up with a kid named Steve Bradley, who I think is the best wrestler to never make it to the WWE on TV. They partnered me up with him and they would fly me up every other week and have Steve train with me at the WWE headquarters.”
In a recent interview with Fightful, Barry Darsow spoke about his infamous ‘King of the Road’ match with Dustin Rhodes at WCW Uncensored 1995. The match took place in the caged-off trailer of the Blacktop Bully’s 18-wheeler truck.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On being the Blacktop Bully: “The Blacktop Bully was one of my favorite gimmicks. You had Dustin Rhodes on the other day. What a great guy; Dustin is one of the best workers in this business, too, by the way. When I had that truck match [King of the Road] with him in WCW, we had so much fun in that match, and we both got fired. It was incredible.”
On the King of the Road match: “We drove 60 miles around Atlanta, [we] had helicopters with cameras and trucks with cameras. We were wrestling, we were having a great time, and we ended up bleeding like crazy everywhere. The office told us to get blood, so we ended up hitting the barbed wire. We did everything there, and we were bleeding from head to toe, and they ended up cutting out a bunch of that match too.”
On getting fired after: “We were in a field when the match was done, and I looked at Dustin. I gave him a big hug. I said, Dustin, that was the freaking best match. That was the funnest. What a match. We hugged each other. I ended up driving back to Charlotte. He went to wherever his home was. The next day I got a call from Eric Bischoff, and Eric said, Barry, what a match, and he said I got good news and bad news for you. I said, well, what is the good news? He said it’s one of the better matches I’ve ever seen. I said, well, what’s the bad news? He goes, you’re fired. I said, fired; it was one of the best matches ever. He says you weren’t supposed to have any blood on TV. It was an uncensored match. Mike Graham, our agent, said we had to be bleeding from head to toe, which we were, and we’re going to get fired over that? So, Eric says, yeah, but please, Barry, don’t give me a stink. I’ll hire you back. I promise. So I said, all right, and I called up Dustin. I said, Dustin, did you get fired too? So he answered, yeah, I got fired, and then Mike Graham called, and he got fired. So we all got fired. That was the one thing I said to Eric. I hope you fire everybody involved. He said, no, it’s just you three. So anyway, we got fired for having one of the best matches. He hired me back after that, about a year later. So he was good with his word.”
