KURT ANGLE ON STEROIDS AND ENTRY INTO MMA
- 03/22/2007 (10:01:08 am)
- CBS Sportsline
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Link to article: BOXING - CBS SportsLine.com
Thanks to Mike & Bob for link.
Five Ounces of Pain: Angle eyes entry into MMA
March 21, 2007By Sam Caplan, Special to CBS SportsLine.com
It's a few minutes after 11 on a Wednesday morning when the phone rings.
"Hello, this is Kurt Angle," the voice says on the other end.
Just then it hits me: I'm on the phone with a former Olympic gold medalist and WWE champion. But there's an important matter to be discussed: Angle's potential entry into mixed martial arts.
Since leaving WWE this past summer (Angle claims he left on his own accord, while his former employer claims he was dismissed) his physical wellbeing has been a hot button issue among his fans and critics. Rumors of painkiller addiction, along with a neck that has been broken on multiple occasions, have been topics of concern.
"I'm doing really well," Angle said. "I had some severe neck injuries over the last seven years. I had four neck injuries, plus the fifth one where I broke my neck in the Olympics. I'm actually almost 100 percent now, and I wouldn't go into mixed martial arts without the knowledge of knowing that I'm 100 percent and I feel good."
"Go into mixed martial arts" is the operative phrase, as thus far, Angle has done his fair share of talking but hasn't done much in the way of action.
Angle's sincerity regarding a possible MMA crossover has been called into question by several pundits, including UFC president Dana White. White referred to Angle as being "Full of s---" during a video interview for a Fox television pilot called The Fight Game.
White softened his comments in an interview conducted with CBS SportsLine.com several weeks ago, but still expressed skepticism.
"I like Kurt," White said. "I've talked to Kurt a bunch of times. I'm just not sure how committed he is to fighting. I made him an offer before and he went over and did TNA wrestling. I don't know."
White isn't the only one who isn't sold on Angle's comments. Various pundits have claimed Angle's public flirtation with MMA is nothing more than a public relations ploy.
"Those pundits are wrong," Angle said calmly. "I would never say something that I wasn't going to do. Whoever's criticizing me must not know me. I won an Olympic gold medal with a broken neck and I'm 100 percent healthy now. I think it will be hell of a lot easier for me to fight a fight with my neck healthy than with a broken neck."
The former Olympic gold medalist has also seen his name surface in the headlines for a topic unrelated to MMA. An article on Sports Illustrated's web site claimed Angle's name appeared on a list of major pro athletes having received steroids from Applied Pharmacy Services in Mobile, Ala. The report claimed Angle received two shipments between October 2004 and February 2005.
In a statement issued after the allegations, Angle denied any wrong doing.
I did not improperly receive prescriptions," Angle said in the statement. "It is well documented that in my career I have broken vertebrae in my neck on five occasions, and each time the course of treatment was under the care and supervision of my doctors.
"Any attempt to link me to the athletes in the current news accounts who may have improperly sought performance-enhancing drugs is without foundation."
Angle first considered getting involved with mixed martial arts soon after his gold medal victory in the heavyweight freestyle wrestling division at the 1996 Olympics. He would revisit the idea several times during his WWE career, even garnering a five-year, $30 million offer from a third party representing Pride Fighting Championships. Angle gave MMA serious consideration again after leaving the WWE this past summer.
The UFC contacted him shortly after his WWE departure when it was uncertain what Angle's next career move would be. White offered to set up Angle with all the training he would need in order to prepare for his debut.
White also had his sights on the bigger picture. Angle was 37 at the time, and the UFC president realized that Angle's career in MMA, whether it would prove to be successful or not, would have a short shelf life. So the UFC also offered Angle a coaching position on The Ultimate Fighter, and had several other non-fighting roles envisioned for him if he chose to sign with the company.
Angle liked what he heard, but there was one pill he wasn't willing to swallow. One of White's demands was that Angle would have to leave professional wrestling.
"I'd prefer he did one or the other," White answered in our interview with him when asked if Angle would have to choose between MMA and pro wrestling. "I mean, how the hell are you going to professional wrestle and professional fight? It doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of time and training to dedicate to fighting."
Unwilling to walk away from wrestling, Angle eventually decided to accept an offer to join TNA wrestling, a promotion that airs weekly on Spike TV and monthly on pay-per-view.
Despite choosing TNA over the UFC, Angle did not give up on his MMA aspirations. Angle went so far as to have language included in his TNA contract that would allow him to pursue mixed martial arts opportunities.
Angle continued to publicly discuss his desire to go into MMA on various radio shows and revealed that he had engaged in talks with upstart MMA promotion EliteXC, which has an exclusive deal with Showtime.
Soon after hearing that Angle was talking to EliteXC, Angle claims White placed a call to TNA president Dixie Carter.
"He didn't want me to wrestle too, and I wasn't going to give up something I love to do," said Angle. "So it didn't happen, and then Showtime and EliteXC started getting interested in me, and Dana White caught wind of it. He called my boss, Dixie Carter of TNA, and said, 'Why is Kurt going there? Why doesn't he come with me?' And he said, 'I want to talk to him again.'"
In addition to renewed interest from the UFC and current interest from EliteXC, Angle claims that the International Fight League has been in contact as well.
Despite Angle's insistence he's serious about MMA, he didn't offer a timetable when pressed for when he plans to make a final decision and begin training. In fact, Angle has no plans to train in MMA until he has a deal signed with a major promotion. He also reaffirmed his commitment to pro wrestling and made it clear that before he cuts a deal with a promotion, he wants to know he's going to be big part of their future as well as their present.
"I'm not going to start training until I sign," Angle said. "I don't have to fight. I could retire in the next few years. I'm fine financially. Although, I do want a big paycheck when I fight because I'm putting myself at risk, I'm putting my career at risk and also, I don't think anyone in mixed martial arts has seen anyone like me, especially being an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. I'm just going to look around, I'm going to look for just not the highest deal, but what's what I feel is the best opportunity for me. I don't want just a one-fight deal. I want to be involved in the company for years to come. I want to fight continuously as long as I can and still be involved with the company afterward."
For Angle's potential future as an MMA fighter, the biggest question of might be a situation completely out of his hands. By his own admission, he has suffered neck injuries five different times, including broken necks on two separate occasions. As such, the final decision as to whether he enters MMA will not be made by him, TNA, the UFC or EliteXC, but by a licensing board.
But Angle expressed little concern that he won't be granted a license, based largely on the fact that his surgeon, Dr. Hae Dong Jho of Pittsburgh, has used somewhat experimental procedures that were minimally invasive.
"No, I won't have any problem. I'll pass all the physicals," Angle said. "I have a great doctor, Dr. Jho in Pittsburgh. He's the one who saved my career. The reason why I'll get passed for fights is that I never had fusion. I had minimally invasive surgery. All they do is cut out the problem; in other words, if a disk gets jammed and it's blocking the nerves to my arms and I can't raise my arms because my nerves are blocked, he'll go in and he'll clip out just a couple millimeters so that nerve is open again and the passageway to my arm is fine, and I'm able to utilize my arm again."
Angle credits Jho with saving his career. Jho has become a somewhat controversial figure as one of only three doctors in the world who performs the kind of surgery he does. He has gone so far as to create his own medical instruments in order to perform the minimally invasive procedure. Angle claims Jho has drawn the ire of other surgeons because he's hurting the business of physicians who perform fusion, a procedure that can cost up to five times more than Jho's version of the surgery.
Angle is hanging his hat on the fact that he'll get passed because he never underwent fusion surgery, which limits mobility in the neck for most recipients of the procedure.
"The fusion, it would be kind of hard to pass somebody with fusion because the mobility of their neck, when the doctor goes to check the neck out to see how mobile is and they can't really move it without moving their whole body, the doctor's going to say, 'Whoa, I don't know if this guy's able to be able to fight,'" Angle said. "Me, I have full flexibility in my neck, because I had a doctor who saved my career. Not only did he save my wrestling career, he saved my fighting career, thank god."
The confidence expressed by Angle was somewhat surprising, considering just a few weeks earlier he acknowledged some concern about getting licensed when he was a guest on the radio program The Bubba the Love Sponge Show.
Why is he so much more confident now than just a couple of weeks earlier?
"Because we checked into the licensing; what would I have to do to pass it, and the doctors are more concerned with fusion and not having that mobility in your neck," Angle explained. "The doctors are more concerned with fusion and not having that mobility in your neck. And when you don't have that mobility in your neck and you have two or three vertebrae fused together, that puts more stress on the other vertebrae in your neck and you're more susceptible to breaking your neck again in those other areas. ... What we did was we found out what is it that doctors are going to be looking for. They're going to look for mobility in your neck; they're going (to consider) what kind of surgery you had; they're going to ask if you had fusion or minimally invasive surgery."
Angle's comments will no doubt raise the ire of many who'll claim they're wishful thinking. We decided to ask Keith Kizer, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, whether Angle had a valid claim that he'll be able to get licensed because he never had fusion.
"It's possible," Kizer said. "Obviously, yeah, had he had a vertebrae fused it would be much more difficult -- very difficult. But not being a doctor, but knowing Mr. Angle's background in Olympic wrestling and his fitness level throughout the years, he's definitely able to apply here for a license."
Also, Angle says, a fighter getting licensed after undergoing the same surgery he's undergone wouldn't be unprecedented. Per Angle's recommendation, Mark Coleman, a former UFC heavyweight champion and contemporary of Angle's as an amateur, underwent the same neck surgery and was licensed several months later.
While getting licensed is possible, Angle will still be put through the wringer if he were to apply in a state that is as well-regulated as Nevada.
"With an athlete that has had some injuries like that, what the doctor would initially (do) is look at the required medicals, and then based on that, decide whether the applicant needs to be sent out to some sort of specialist in the area that we're talking about -- in this case, of course a neck specialist -- and get some more information," Kizer said. "Then, he'd make a recommendation to the full commission, and then the commissioners would decide whether or not to grant the applicant a license."
There's also the issue of Angle's age. In many states, any fighter born before 1970 is subject to additional testing.
Injuries aren't the only obstacle standing in the way of a potential entry into MMA. Angle currently weighs 240 pounds, a weight that would prevent him from being able to fight many of the industry's top light heavyweight fighters. But Angle believes a potential solution has already been figured out, with a special weight class having been discussed with several promotions.
"What I'm trying to do is put myself in position where I am a special attraction of whatever company I'm in, where I can fight guys at heavyweight that are a little bit lighter, around the 220 to the 245 range, or I can have one of their light heavyweights move up to 220 and I can move down to 220 and meet them in the middle, make the weight, and then fight them," Angle said.
While Angle offers solutions about how he can work around his history with injuries and questions about his fighting weight, dealing with the specter of how a loss in MMA would affect his stock in pro wrestling isn't as easy.
"Will (a loss) hurt me? Yeah, it could. It could hurt me. Am I aware of it? Yeah, I am definitely aware of it," Angle said. "But you know, if I was 30 years old and I went into mixed martial arts and I got my butt kicked, I think that would hurt my stock a hell of a lot more than me being 38, 39, and 40 years old and going in there and fighting."
There's also the question of whether Angle still has "it." Questioning his past amateur wrestling accomplishments is futile. But it has been quite some time since he trained full-time as a freestyle wrestler.
When asked about that, Angle recited a story that has become legend within pro wrestling circles.
"You know, I took (former NCAA Division I wrestling champion turned WWE wrestler) Brock Lesnar right out of college, who's a national champ, and I was out of wrestling for I think six or seven years, and I beat the crap out of him," Angle said. "I thought 'Wow, I've been out of wrestling for a while now' and god, this guy weighs 310, and I only weighed about 228 at the time. I know I still have it. I just need to get back training."
It's clear Angle has given a potential entry into MMA plenty of thought. Yet, one still gets the impression that a degree in caution should be exercised in believing his words. After all, Angle is a professional wrestler. There's always the potential of being "worked" (pro wrestling slang for being lied to, or spoken to "in character").
His chosen profession aside, if Angle was acting, he deserves an Oscar. While many doubt whether we'll actually see him in an MMA bout, consider me convinced that it isn't a question of if, only when.
Sam Caplan is a Philadelphia-based sports talk show host and freelance sportswriter. He's also an amateur mixed martial artist (and we do mean amateur) who trains out of the Mixed Martial Arts Academy of Philadelphia. Sam can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or you can check out his blog at: http://www.FiveOuncesOfPain.com
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