How did Kurt Angle come up with his Ankle Lock submission-finisher?
Who better to ask than the WWE Hall Of Fame legend himself?
During a recent installment of his Kurt Angle Show podcast, the pro wrestling legend spoke about the origins of his finishing move. Featured below is an excerpt from the show where he talks about this particular topic.
“Being a shooter and having the history I did, I wanted to come up with a submission hold I could start using. I knew that Ken Shamrock used the ankle lock. He was gone doing MMA and I figured I might as well take that. Ken Shamrock wasn’t upset about it. He actually was very cool about it. Taking his finish and using it helped me dearly. It made me a more credible wrestler and more dangerous.
I can give it to anybody, any size. It wouldn’t matter. It had nothing to do with the Olympic Slam getting changed to the Angle Slam. That was the Olympic Committee threatening to sue us if we used the word, Olympic, because they owned that word. So, I had to change the Olympic Slam to the Angle Slam. It’s funny because when Michael Cole found out the Olympic Committee was upset, the next week on RAW, he said Olympic Slam at least 15 times because he wanted to piss them off. He just kept saying it. It was hilarious. We have a sense of humor in the wrestling world. The fans would call it the Angle lock. I called it the ankle lock because I didn’t want to take away from Ken Shamrock. The word he used was ankle and I wanted to continue with that out of respect to Ken.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
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