WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle Discusses How He Got Into Wrestling In His Youth

WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle has been considered one of the best pure wrestlers the sport has ever seen, famously winning an Olympic gold medal with a broken neck. The road to the 1996 games in Atlanta was a rocky one, however, as 'The Wrestling Machine' recently sat down at the Steel City Con event in his home state of Pennsylvania to discuss how he found the sport of wrestling in the first place.

"My brother Mark, he got [into] a lot of trouble as a kid, and so the wrestling coach told him one day 'why don't you take your aggressions out on the wrestling mat?'" Angle recalled. "So the wrestling coach got him to join the wrestling team, and he kind of was the guy who we looked up to in our family. So we all followed him, what he did, and we ended up starting the wrestling when we were younger kids."

Angle admitted that he wasn't very good to begin with, even revealing that he would sometimes cry after wrestling practice because he got pinned so much. However, a family tragedy became the catalyst for Angle to take wrestling more seriously.

"The light bulb didn't go off in my head until high school. A tragedy had to occur for that to happen, my dad was killed in a construction accident when I entered high school, and losing him at a young age like that was really tough," Angle continued. "He was our biggest supporter. Sports were important with my dad, he really wanted us to all be involved in sports all year round and he never missed any of our sporting events. He always showed up and I loved him for that, so I dedicated my athletic career to my father."

Angle went on to say that his father passing away made him more determined and more focused as an amateur wrestler, so much so that by his senior year, he won the state championship in wrestling. The rest, as they say, is history.

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