Kurt Angle

Kurt Steven Angle (born December 9, 1968) is an American professional wrestler, actor and retired amateur wrestler currently signed to WWE and performing as the on-screen general manager for the Raw brand. While a student at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, Angle won numerous accolades, including being a two-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Heavyweight Wrestling Champion. After graduating college, Angle won a gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the 1995 World Wrestling Championships. He then won a freestyle wrestling gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Angle is one of four people to complete an amateur wrestling Grand Slam (junior nationals, NCAA, world championships and Olympics). In 2006, he was named by USA Wrestling as the greatest shoot wrestler ever and one of the top 15 college wrestlers of all time. He was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 for his amateur accomplishments. Angle made his first appearance at a professional wrestling event in 1996, with his in-ring debut following in 1998. He signed a long-term contract with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) that same year and participated in his first televised storyline in March 1999. After months of unaired matches, Angle made his official debut in November and received his first major push in the company in February 2000, when he held the European Championship and the Intercontinental Championship simultaneously. Four months later, he won the King of the Ring tournament and not long after he began pursuing the WWF Championship, which he won in October. This capped off a rookie year which is considered by many to be the greatest in professional wrestling history. Throughout his tenure in the WWF/WWE, Angle was a six-time world champion (four reigns as WWF/WWE Champion, one as WCW Champion and one as WWE's World Heavyweight Champion), a one-time United States Champion, one-time Intercontinental Champion, one-time European Champion, one-time Hardcore Champion and one-time WWE Tag Team Champion. He is the tenth Triple Crown Champion and the fifth Grand Slam Champion (achieving this accolade twice under both the original and current format) in WWE history. On March 31 2017, Angle was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, becoming the third active wrestler to be inducted after Ric Flair and Sting. After leaving WWE in 2006, Angle joined Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA, now Impact Wrestling) where he became a record six-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion (and the inaugural titleholder), a two-time TNA World Tag Team Champion and a one-time TNA X Division Champion. He is the second Triple Crown winner in TNA history and the only one to hold all the required titles at once. Angle is also a two-time King of the Mountain. As part of TNA, he made appearances for New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) and the Inoki Genome Federation (IGF), holding the IWGP Heavyweight Championship once. In 2013, Angle was inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame (he is the second wrestler after Sting to be inducted into both the WWE and TNA halls of fame). Between WWF/WWE, Japan and TNA, Angle has won 13 world championships and 21 total championships. He is the only professional wrestler in history to have won the WWE Championship, WWE's World Heavyweight Championship, the WCW Championship, the TNA World Heavyweight Championship and the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. Angle is also the only person to have been King of the Mountain and King of the Ring. He has headlined numerous pay-per-view events for both WWF/WWE and TNA throughout his career, including the flagship event for both promotions: WrestleMania in WWE and Bound for Glory in TNA. In 2004, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter inducted Angle into its Hall of Fame and later named him "Wrestler of the Decade" for the 2000s. He is considered to be one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. ESPN journalist and former WWE personality Jonathan Coachman described Angle as "the greatest I've ever seen in the ring".