Kurt Angle and the milk truck
 

Just wondering because my mind isn't working as well as it should but did he do it twice? I'm watching the one he did against the Alliance and I'm sure something is missing.

Nah I'm pretty sure he only did the milk truck once.

I'm sure he pulled some other Stone Cold like stunts though during that time period.

Yeah, he only did it once, but I'm entirely too distracted by that picture...

Ahh the 'lets make Angle look like a geek angle', that was good stuff.....

Hey, I thought it was pretty funny. Angle can make any gimmick look good.

I thought it was hilarious personally.

angle is all round excellent! heel or face it dont matter! he can out wrestle anyone!
seems wrong if he loses any match!
yeah his stunts and gimmicks rule!

He only did it once, during stone Cold appreciation night.

he can't out wrestle brock maybe even benoit :y:

Who won the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal in Freestyle Wrestling again?

Actually Kurt and Brock did have a legitmate freestyle wrestling match once and Kurt won. :y:

Oh yeah, and who has Summerslam 2001 dvd where it shows footage after RAW went off the air? It's freaking hilarious! I definately suggest buying the dvd for that moment, plus the whole PPV was good as well.

This is the sad thing about the booking of Kurt Angle. To me, if I was the promoter and I billed a guy as having a legit wrestling background, that should dictate that he should kill everyone in a WRESTLING match. The fact that he was doing JOBs so early in his career and was never booked as a badass mofo is one of the many Vince McMahon decisions that will boggle my mind for the rest of time.

This deal with the milk truck was a prime example of how Kurt shouldn't be booked, which is in angles that while they are entertaining in a hah hah funny type way. In the end it doesn't translate to money, because comedy doesn't sell tickets.

The milk truck and the cowboy hat were definitely Kurt's funniest moments from that year.

It helps get pro wrestling over. It says just because you freestyle doesn't automatically mean anything in pro wrestling. It maybe opened some doors for Kurt, but ultimately he had to work his way up in the WWF just like anyone else. Builds character too, in my opinion.

The way I see it, if a guy say dominates in boxing at the Olympic level (like a Lennox Lewis did with Canada) that guy should get a huge ush when he truns pro. If he is successful he will win championships and possibly dominate like he did in the Olympics. With Kurt, it was clear almost from day one that he had a bright future in the business. So why not use his past success as a means to get himself and the company over in the mainstream media. I'm not saying they should go back to pretending its all real, but Kurt is a very media friendly character, and he could have been used to put over the fact that it takes a very good athlete to make it in the WWE.

Also, the concept of 'working your way up' is a flawed concept when it comes to pro wrestling. I've used this example before, but when Hulk Hogan was given his push when he returned to the WWF in the 80s he was pushed right to the top, he wasn't forced to 'pay any dues' or anything crazy like that. The WWF realized he had potential and they did all they could to make him a star and it worked. Even if you look at Austin, and when they decided to push him in mid 96, he did very few JOBs. The only times he really lost were to Bret, and those matches were laid out to make Steve a star, so it didn't hurt him. If you contrast that to how guys are pushed today (with 50-50 booking and paying dues) one can see why a money draing star hasn't been created in the past 4 years. Even with Hunter he had the benefit of a Mick foley to make him a star, whereas a guy like Angle doesn't even have that, so the question remains how do you become a money drawing star?

IMO the WWE had a ready made angle with Kurt, where he's the Olympic champ in wrestling and as a result nobody should be able to beat him. The whole deal with him being an arrogant heel was a goood idea IMO (given the climate of wrestling fans in 1999), but where they dropped the ball was not having him dominate. It seemed so simple to make him be dominant, win the title, and then have one of the top babyfaces (ie Austin, Rock, or even someone new) chase him down and win the title, thus giving the person that finally beat him a huge rub.

It was damn funny. I felt kinda sorry for the WCW guys, they must be freezing then, being soaked.

Angle is da man.

Sorry for waiting so long to reply to this, but I kinda lost track of it. Anyway, I was talking more storyline wise when I was talking about him "working his way up". Sure, Hogan went the fast route, but he's Hogan. Hulk Hogan is, like him, hate him, can't stand him, or whatever, most certainly one of a kind (and no, I don't mean he's Rob Van Dam ;)).

You mention Austin, and you MAY have somewhat of a point, but Austin DID lose to guys like Savio Vega and stuff in '96 and then of course Bret, and in the five on five match, Owen pinned him. It's not as though Kurt were being pinned by everyone and his brother. He lost a tag match here or there, or a triple threat match. He won two titles, and was never pinned or made to submit for either. He then went on to win the big one...doing it by starting at the bottom, working to the European Title, working to the Intercontinental Title, winning King of the Ring, and then and only then, getting into the World Title picture.

Granted, having him hold the title from just October to February was kinda lame, but they wanted to do Austin Rock for the second time at Mania, so there's not much to be done there.

CyNick, you mentioned the question of how to make a star? Wel you kinda answered it in your post. The way to make a main event star is by pushing them to the top (if they are ready) and by having them gain convincing and CLEAN victories over their opponents. Look at examples of main eventers who weren't as credible as others...

Jericho: cheated to win the title against Rock and Austin, and when he faced them both at the next two PPV's, he cheated to win those matches as well. That made him look weaker than Rock and Austin (not to mention steph and HHH's politics, but whatever)
Angle: cheated to win most of the titles he won at first, and when he had the WWE title, he cheated most of the time to keep it. (winning in 6man cluster**** matches isn't very believeable IMO)
RVD, Booker T, and others could have been main event stars, but were beaten and made to look weak to HHH

Now people that are believeable main eventers...
Rock and HHH: won title by cheating at first, but had Foley to establish them and make them believeable by losing cleanly to them.
Austin: worked his ass up to get to the top, and won several clean victories to become believeable.
Brock Lesnar: he was taken seriously at first, clean wins over Rock, Undertaker, Big Show, Angle all made him look unstoppable. Lately he's been cheating to gain victories against main eventers, and tapping out all the time. Lesnar needs to get a couple more clean victories over main eventers (besides the asskicking I hope he gives Holly)


It's obvious that if a main eventer is beating his opponents in a way that shows he is clearly better than them (not by cheating) then fans will respond to this person and support him.