On the latest episode of Insight With Chris Van Vliet, James Storm shared the backstage story of his TNA World Championship victory, revealing that Kurt Angle, who was legitimately injured, changed their entire match on the fly to give Storm a championship moment.
“It was great. A lot of the stuff leading up to it kind of went off course or whatever. Because I beat him, and then the next week I lost it to Bobby, which is fine, because Bobby was going on this big heel run, and then I was supposed to beat him in Arizona in a hardcore match that we were having as well. So the night before he wrestles Kurt and loses, and they didn’t tell him until that day, I believe. They didn’t tell him that Kurt was going to keep the belt, and they didn’t tell me that I was winning the belt until about an hour before we were supposed to go out. So I had this huge match planned with Kurt. It was really cool, because he believed in me enough to put a match together, which was really cool. This is awesome.”
“However, just before the match, Angle revealed he was hurt.
Then about an hour he came to me and goes, ‘Hey, man. My hamstring is messed up really bad. I can’t really…’ I was like, ‘Hey, man, no problem, we take it easy.’ He goes, ‘How about we do this instead? How about I go out there and just beat you up for a little bit? Then you kick me out of nowhere, and then you take the rest of the time to do you. You’ve earned this spot to go out and celebrate. You do whatever you want to do.’ So when I beat him, I roll over, and I said, thank you very much. He said, ‘Quit laying there, get up and celebrate.’ Yes, sir. So, I mean, it was really cool. I did a lot of driving with him and stuff, and just learned stuff from him. I always say I’ve been very fortunate, because I’ve been able to learn from Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig and Kurt Angle.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Insight With Chris Van Vliet with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
