‘Always a stigma’ – A bank robbery derailed my Olympic dream but Kurt Angle ‘opened the doors’ for me to join WWE

WWE icon Kurt Angle blazed a trail for amateur wrestling prodigies transitioning to the glitz and glamour of the professional ranks.

Eight years later Bobby Lashley almost followed the same path from the Olympics to WWE before a bank robbery derailed his dreams.

TNA/Impact

Lashley was helped into professional wrestling by Angle[/caption]

Angle was pivotal in helping the Almighty find his feet in professional wrestling, unaware of how entwined their careers would become.

The pair both switched to WWE from amateur wrestling, left to join TNA and then returned to the company where they made their names.

The duo also saw their amateur stints wrecked by injuries, with Angle famously having to win a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics with a ‘broken freaking neck’.

Lashley, already a gold medalist from his time in the United States Army wrestling in the International Military Sports Council, had aspirations of adding another at the 2004 Olympics.

Yet a year before the event at the home of the Olympics in Greece, disaster struck while Lashley was training in Colorado Springs.

An innocuous visit to the local bank saw him caught up in a dramatic robbery that ruined his chances of wrestling on the big stage.

A bullet barely grazed him as he dived for cover but as he went down he shattered his knee…right before the World Team trials.

Successive surgeries followed which led to the window of Lashley’s Olympic hopes ending unless he wanted to grind for another four years.

AFP

talkSPORT

His injury may have seen him turn away from wrestling forever but fortunately, fate intervened in the form of WWE Hall of Famer Angle.

Angle had come to Colorado for a visit before the robbery and arrived with WWE cameras in tow to film material for Confidential.

During an interview with talkSPORT, Lashley said: “I was the Olympic training centre at the time training and Kurt came over with the WWE and he was doing a vignette for a match-up that he had.

“He saw me running around with the group and training and everything. He pulled me off to the side and was like, “Man you’ve got a good look, have you ever thought about doing professional wrestling?”

“I was a big fan of Kurt so I was trying to hold it in and I was a big fan of professional wrestling but there was always a stigma between the two.

“Amateur wrestlers always had a little grief with professional wrestling to a certain extent but when Kurt came down and talked to me and said, “If you were have done everything that you did in wrestling…if you had done that in football or baseball or basketball you’d be a multi-millionaire. He said professional wrestling is our pro sport.”

Angle’s recommendation led to a phone call from WWE talent scout Gerald Brisco, but Lashley’s Olympic training put any move on hold.

After his injury the phone rang again and the future two-time WWE champion rehabbed his knee to the point that he could start his journey to the ring.

Lashley told talkSPORT: “Brisco called me and there were a series of events that happened and I came and from there I fell in love with pro wrestling as an actual pro wrestler.

“I never saw that as a possibility because the places that I was around we didn’t have independents. I lived in Germany for a while then I was in Kansas and I never knew any independent professional wrestling.

“All I knew was the big time so I didn’t know if there was a transition or how they even got there so when I met Kurt, Kurt was the one that opened up all those doors for me.”

Lashley has since gone on to become one of the biggest names in combat sports, with the height of his first stint in WWE being at WrestleMania 23 in the Battle of the Billionaires with Vince McMahon and Donald Trump.

Trump and McMahon was represented by Lashley and Umaga respectively and they battled it out at Mania to see which billionaire would be shaved bald – with the Almighty coming out on top.

Lashley went onto try his hand at MMA, going 5-0 in Bellator, before walking away from the sport in 2016 after submitting Josh Appelt.

The 47-year-old returned to his professional wrestling roots and has finally realised his potential in the past couple of years by becoming one of the biggest stars on the WWE roster.