Hey, Boys and Girls, we had the pleasure of speaking with a real live Olympic Gold Medalist and one of our favourite professional wrestling superstars. Kurt Angle chatted with us about his role in the MMA-drenched drama, Warrior.  Oh, it’s true! It’s true!

Dig it!

Warrior

Kurt Angle

The Lady Miz Diva:  What brought you to Warrior?

Kurt Angle:  Well, I knew they were shooting in the Pittsburgh area and my friends kept telling me, ‘You gotta go down there. You gotta try out for this.’ So I went to the fight club I knew they were training at.  They asked me how much I weighed, I told them “230 pounds.”  They asked me if I could lose 30 pounds and I said “Sure.”  They asked me if I had any tattoos and I lied and told them “no.”  I kind of realised then who they were really going for; Fedor Emelianenko {Mixed Martial Arts champion}, and I was like, “okay.”  Then they asked me if I had a lot of time {to shoot the movie} and I told them, “No, I don’t, because I’m working with TNA Impact” and I only had a few days to shoot.  They thought they wouldn’t be able to use me, but because of my experience as a professional wrestler and also because I had learned a lot about MMA because I was interested in perhaps making a move to UFC, we got the shoot done in a few days.  The things they were asking me to do; the choreography, setting up the shots, this is what professional wrestlers do all day.  The hardest part of making the film was losing those 30 pounds, but I did it through training and eating foods with Ultra Fiber DX.

LMD:  Koba is the scariest Russian movie athlete since Ivan Drago in Rocky III.  Did you happen to watch that film to get into character?

KA:  A lot of people seem to think of Ivan Drago, but I think the difference between Koba and Drago is that Ivan Drago was this newcomer coming from a foreign country.  Nobody had ever seen him; he came out of nowhere to beat the champion.  Koba was already an MMA champion, everybody wanted to see him.  That’s how it is in MMA.  When Fedor was undefeated, everybody wanted to see his matches.  That’s kind of how Koba is.  Then you have these regular guys fighting their way up in the tournament to challenge him.

LMD:  When I watched you on WWE, I always thought your mic skills were as good as any wrestler I’d ever seen.  Was it strange for you to have so little dialog in the film?

KA:  When I started {in professional wrestling} I knew nothing about doing promos, talking to media, none of the things you had to do in the WWE.  All I had were my wrestling skills.  So, thank God Vince McMahon really helped me out; he wrote what I was going to say, four pages and he said, “you’re going to go out there and you’re going to say this,” and that was it.  It was in front of my hometown, too.  It was sink or swim.  But thank goodness for that trial by fire, because I wouldn’t have the skills I do today.  For Koba, I had very little to say and it was all in Russian.  I had to learn Russian!

LMD:  I understand that you are considering returning to your roots in Olympic wrestling and trying out for the US team?  Is this true, and if so how far has your training gone?

KA:  It’s true!  I am in the middle of training for the Olympic team.  I thought about it couple of years ago and said, ‘I’m 40, and I feel like I’m in greatest shape of my life.’  So I went about a training program and luckily, TNA allowed me to work it out in my schedule with them and it’s going great. I’m five months ahead of schedule.

LMD:  When you started out in the WWE, you did out-of-character PSAs promoting angina awareness.  I was so impressed by that, because it was early on in your career and you were using your new fame for a great reason.  Do you still support that cause?

KA:  I have a history of angina in my family, so it was very important to me to promote awareness of the disease.  Now I’m very involved with Kurt Angle Foods, and what we do is we distribute healthy food with real food proteins and healthy fats that are customised for heart health and they also help people who have diabetes and are great for people trying to lose weight.  Everything we distribute has the Ultra Fiber DX I mentioned earlier.  So I’m not doing the PSAs, but I’m doing this.

~ The Lady Miz Diva

Sept 6^th, 2011

Special thanks to Messrs. Steve Flack & Armando Fuentes for their invaluable help with this interview.

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