Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle | Tales From Backstage

The exact catalyst for the fight is often debated, but Angle explained his side in interviews and in his autobiography, It's True, It's True. According to Angle, the tension between the two had quietly been building for some time, and played up by a locker room full of faux-alphas that wanted to see which one of the real ones had it in them to take out the other.

Buoyed by his early successes and a lifetime of dominance in his chosen fields, Lesnar was known to be getting cocky, especially with the attention he was receiving for his physical prowess and quick success in WWE. Angle was a seasoned pro by comparison, and felt Lesnar was being disrespectful and failing to understand the delicate politics of wrestling in the locker room.

The situation finally came to a head when Angle reportedly overheard Lesnar saying something about him. The words allegedly came across as 'The Next Big Thing' challenging and/or questioning Angle’s credibility and skills, which infuriated the Olympian. Determined to set the record straight, and - given the nature of both men's backgrounds - restore the status quo when it came to the backstage court of public opinion, confrontation became inevitable.

Taking place in a locker room and/or hall way during a WWE taping in 2002, Angle confronted Lesnar and things quickly escalated from verbal tension to a physical confrontation. With both men using their amateur backgrounds, Angle asserts that it was as much about establishing dominance as they locked up in a tussle. He went on to describe the fight as being intensely physical but pointed out that neither man was seriously injured, and that though it didn't go on for a long time, his ability to get the upper hand was enough to send a message.

He credited his superior technique and experience - especially in terms of controlling the position and maintaining leverage - for giving him the edge. According to Angle, he was able to take Lesnar down and maintain control, though he did not make it an all-out victory like a formal wrestling match. It's worth noting that the situation might have been different from Lesnar's point of view. Known for not saying much about anything unless he's on the clock, Lesnar didn’t really talk about the altercation in detail, and many wrestlers have alluded to the fact that there was at least a mutual respect baked in to the competitive rivalry regardless of who won and lost.

There at very least wasn’t any official punishment for either wrestler. Both men continued their careers without diversion, and while the fight was an open secret, it didn’t seem to have lasting negative effects. In fact, respect for both went up. In the eyes of the many, Angle and Lesnar had the guts to settle their differences physically, and in a way that didn’t involve the drama that is often associated with politics in the wrestling business.

In that respect, it was unlike any real life in the chequered history of backstage squabbles. It was crucial to get it out of the way anyway. Paul Heyman was the creative head of a wrestling- heavy era of SmackDown that featured both men prominently, and was once again about to feature prominently in the lives of both en route to a worked contest that had been on the company's dry-erase board for years. With the emotions seemingly expunged, there was serious business to be done...

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