WWE History: The day Kurt Angle and Vince McMahon wrestled on an airplane
The plane rides are infamous episodes in WWE history. If they need summarizing, many of them are a bunch of WWE superstars trying to showboat and wrestle inside an international flight in an intoxicated state.
The stakeholders in this story range from the who's who of the business and some of them are even Hall of Fame members. Today, we analyze one incident from an infamous flight involving Olympic gold medallist Kurt Angle and Mr. McMahon.
Kurt Angle took to professional wrestling like a fish takes to the water after joining the WWE, climbing up the card rapidly since his debut in 1998. Angle won his first WWE World Championship within a year of making his debut at No Mercy 2000.
The story we're looking at today is the infamous wrestling match between Angle and Vince McMahon on a flight back from England in 2002. But first, a little background. At a RAW taping earlier in the year, Vince had snuck up to Angle from behind and tackled him to the ground. Angle himself wrote about the incident in his autobiography:
"From there we started talking about the time when Vince took me down in the ring one night on RAW IS WAR. It was set up where he snuck behind me, lifted me up in the air, and took me down, then jumped out of the ring, yelling ‘two’ for the takedown."
On the flight back from England, McMahon came up to Kurt Angle and teased him about how he was the only man in WWE who'd successfully wrestled Angle to the ground. Angle described what was going on in his head as Vince McMahon got up and started to walk away:
"At that moment something made me decide to have a little fun with the boss. When Vince got up to walk away, I attacked him from behind, knocked him down, turned him over, and pinned him right in the aisle. There were about eighty World Wrestling Federation people on the plane, and everyone was howling."
One person who didn't fully get what was happening was The Undertaker. He thought Angle was legitimately attacking the boss. So he stepped in and actually choked out Kurt Angle:
"Vince and I had been on the floor for about thirty seconds as Vince struggled to get me off of him when the Undertaker came over and put a choke hold on me. He clamped me so tight that he actually choked me out and I blacked out for a minute. When I came to, Vince was standing up and he had this big smile on his face. I think he just loved the idea that he was wrestling with an Olympic champion, and he decided it wasn’t going to end there."
Kurt Angle has always been one of those superstars who is keen on maintaining his 'American hero' image. It is well documented that he refused to join the ECW after attending one of their shows which witnessed a hardcore massacre in the ring. Angle distanced himself from the brand as it would hit his image hard.
It is a rare occurrence to see him do something out of character in public, like his mid-air clash with Mr McMahon.
All quotes are taken from Kurt Angle's autobiography It's True! It's True!