Daniel Puder Talks WWE Not Honoring His Tough Enough Contract, Kurt Angle Incident, Bill DeMott
Former WWE star Daniel Puder recently joined the Jordan Garber NOW podcast with Jordan Garber to talk about his career in wrestling and the evolution of his persona for WWE. In the interview, Daniel talked about his time starting out in the business, his experience as a contestant and winning Tough Enough, incidents with Kurt Angle and Bill DeMott and more. The show is available at vocnation.com by clicking on the "On Demand" or "2016 Archives" tab, they sent us these highlights:
WWE not owning up to the agreement on his contact:
"I won the contract, people talk about different amounts, I got [a] quarter million my first year. They gave me a crappy deal at the end of the first year. I looked at the situation about how they were treating me when I was busting my butt. If they are just going to offer not what the agreement was than I'm not going to stick around and be a part of it."
Winning Tough Enough:
"I was on the SmackDown show. Miz was getting 75,000 unique hits on his website everyday and I was only getting like 50 or 60,000. I was like, 'I'm done, he won.' So I went out there and they were like, "You won," and I just went nuts. It was crazy."
Kurt Angle incident:
"I kicked his butt back a little bit and I showed him. I really pushed him, he didn't expect it coming like that and I just had a lot of fun with it."
Bill DeMott:
"One time he bent my finger backwards when I didn't do a move right. DeMott held my finger back one day and I looked at him and I smiled and I said, 'are you going to break it or are you gonna show me how to do the move?' He never did it again and respected me for who I was. Very blessed to have him in my life. He's a hard ass and I got good because of it."