Kurt Angle has unlocked the secret behind his Ankle Lock, pointing to Ken Shamrock as a huge influence to use the move.
On the newest episode of his Kurt Angle Show, the WWE Hall of Famer was talking about when he first started using a submission finisher. He explains that the decision to use the Ankle Lock was because he wanted to appear more credible and dangerous.
Well, it was me. I was, you know, being a shooter and having the history I did I wanted to come up with a submission hold that I could start using.
I knew that Ken Shamrock used the Ankle Lock and he was gone doing MMA and I figured I might as well take that. You know, 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.
Angle continues on to say that the decision to use the Ankle Lock actually had nothing to do with the Olympic Committee who at the time were threatening to sue the WWE if they continued to call his finisher the “Olympic Slam.”
Hilariously, Angle also noted that when Michael Cole found out about the threat to sue from the Olympic Committee, he went on to say the word Olympic at least 15 times on RAW just “to p**s them off”.
That was the idea, I could 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 that was threatening to sue us if we used the word Olympic because they own that word, and so I had to change the Olympic Slam to the Angle Slam.
It’s kind of funny because when Michael Cole found out that 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.
Kurt Angle didn’t want to take away from or make to Ankle Lock his own out of respect for Ken Shamrock, revealing that the name ‘Angle Lock’ was never really in question.