Kurt Angle: Why I Disliked Facing Samoa Joe In My First TNA PPV Match
Angle wanted to push back his match with Joe
Sep 29, 2021
After shocking the professional wrestling world with his TNA debut in October 2006, Kurt Angle immediately began a feud with Samoa Joe and the two men squared off at Genesis in November.
At the time, Samoa Joe had been undefeated in TNA for 19 months and Angle revealed on The Kurt Angle Show that he would have preferred to build to their confrontation over a longer period.
"I don't know. I did not like that because Samoa Joe was undefeated. I felt like if I came into the company and started out with someone else, Joe and I could work up to each other in six months to a year. Really build our program, but they wanted to slingshot this thing and do it really quickly. Unfortunately, I ended Joe's undefeated streak the first pay-per-view I wrestled. It made no sense at all. I just felt like we could've built this up, done a lot more pay-per-view buys if we built it the correct way instead of slingshotting it. That's what the company wanted, so that's what I did," Angle said.
Angle would ultimately defeat Joe, ending The Samoan Submission Machine's undefeated streak.
The Wrestling Machine would then remain with TNA until 2016, becoming a six-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion during his run.
H/T to Wrestling Inc.