Kurt Angle comments on WWE's decision to ban moves.
On January 28, it was announced that the Olympic Gold Medalist was launching a new podcast alongside Conrad Thompson on AdFreeShows that would cover his career, addiction struggles, and more. During the debut episode, Angle details the events surrounding WrestleMania 19 and his main-event match with Brock Lesnar.
One of the topics discussed was a string of injuries that hit the company hard around that time and Vince McMahon's decision to start banning some of the riskier maneuvers. According to Angle, the right call was made. Here is what he said:
"Well, they started banning moves. It was something that happened instantly. Vince McMahon just said, hey, from now on, no more over the head belly-to-bellies. We’re gonna crack down on germans unless you’re Kurt or Brock, and Chris Benoit, because we were hitting the germans pretty safely, so he didn't want to paint us in a corner where we were limited. Our german move is a big part of our offence. He was forbidding moves from occurring. The chair shots, the piledriver, the german suplex, belly-to-belly suplex over the head. These were all banned from other wrestlers, and rightfully so."
When asked if he thought chair shots to the head were more dangerous than piledrivers, the WWE Hall of Famer had this to say:
"No, I don't, but you know, piledriver can be serious if you don't do it right. The thing is, one little slip can cause insurmountable damage. I understand why they made it illegal. You're not allowed to use it because there are people that have gotten injured, but most of the time nobody does get injured from it. I just think that you take a chance when you do something like that."
Kurt Angle was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2017. After that, he would wrestle sporadically, also serving as the RAW General Manager, before having his final match at WrestleMania 35 in 2019 where he lost to Baron Corbin.
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