Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2036 - Kurt Angle
Uploaded: 2023-09-19T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2036 - Kurt Angle' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2036 - Kurt Angle' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-19. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2036 - Kurt Angle

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
We're up with the greatest pro wrestling fan in the history of the world, Tony
Hinchcliffe,
and the great and powerful Kurt Angle.
It's an honor, sir. Thank you for being here, man.
Thanks for having me on, Joe.
Dude, I've been a fan of yours for a long time.
What you did in the Olympics with a broken neck is just nothing short of insane.
How did you do that?
I didn't have a choice.
I mean, what happened was I got thrown on my head in the first round of the
Olympic trials.
Pull that microphone up close to you. There you go.
What happened was I got thrown on my head the first round of the Olympic trials,
and I broke my neck, and I didn't know it, so I kept wrestling.
My arms were numb, and my neck was in excruciating pain,
and I wrestled through the semis and won,
and then I had to go on to the finals and wrestle, and I won there.
So I won the first round of the Olympic trials with my neck broken.
I went home the next day, and I went to my doctor,
and he took an MRI of my neck.
He said, you have four discs or four broken vertebrae and two discs
sticking directly in your spinal cord.
He said, you can't wrestle anymore. You're done.
I was devastated, man.
I didn't know what to do.
I figured I better get a second opinion.
So I went to another doctor, and he said basically the same thing,
but he said, when is the next round of the trials?
I said, six weeks.
He said, you know what? I might be able to get you ready by then.
I said, what's your plan?
He said, well, you're not going to be able to train much.
You're going to have to let your neck rest and heal for the next six weeks,
and it won't be completely healed, but it'll be healed enough that you can
still go.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a doctor travel with you,
and this doctor's going to stick you with 12 shots of Novocaine in your neck
five minutes before each one of your matches.
He said, therefore, you won't feel the pain.
You'll forget your neck is broken, and you'll wrestle more freely.
But he said, I'm warning you, an hour after your matches are over,
you're going to be in excruciating pain from the abuse your neck takes during
those matches.
And he said, are you okay with this?
And I said, yes, and it worked.
Wow.
What a decision to make.
Yeah.
I didn't have a choice.
I mean, there was no guarantee I was going to make the Olympic team in 2000 or
2004.
This is my one time.
This is my one shot.
Imagine those guys you beat realizing a guy with a fucking broken neck just
kicked my ass.
I never thought about that.
Not only did he beat me, not only did he win, he won with a broken neck.
Amazing.
Yeah.
So I went to the Olympics, and we did the same thing there.
Wow.
And I was able to get through it, and that's when I retired.
And I retired for a few years, and that was that.
Did it heal up 100% or has it always been fucking with you since then?
I always had problems with it, you know, especially my motor skills and my
hands.
I broke my neck four more times in the WWE, and it got worse and worse.
I mean, I have nerve damage in my neck.
I don't have – I lost three inches in both arms, and they atrophied because
my neck was just so messed up.
And I've had five surgeries, and none of them have really worked.
I'm going to end up having to have fusion, which will be down the line.
Have you done stem cells?
I tried.
It didn't work.
It didn't do it?
No.
Where'd you go?
I went to South America.
I forget which country.
I can't remember.
Columbia.
Yeah.
Columbia, yeah.
Did you go to BioAccelerator?
Did you go to that place?
Yes, I did.
Yes, I did.
A lot of athletes, a lot of fighters go down there.
Yeah, it didn't work for me, unfortunately.
Really?
Just so much damage, huh?
Yeah, yeah, just too much.
I wonder if you just kept going.
Whew.
So what's the extent of it now?
You know what?
I can't feel my pinky fingers.
You know, I have a lot of atrophy in my arms.
I don't have a lot of strength.
I can curl for like 20-pound dumbbells.
When I do triceps, I can only push the weights about 60 pounds forward.
It's just I don't have a lot of strength in my upper body.
And so the thing is, all right, if you look at my chest right here, you'll see
there's
a dip here.
Yeah.
Okay, that's from my neck.
That's a nerve that died and no longer have this muscle in my chest.
I have a complete ripple through my chest.
It'll never come back.
And I'm afraid it's going to happen again, so I'm going to have to have fusion
sooner
than later, because if I don't, the damage is going to get worse and worse, and
then
my arms are going to end up just shrinking to nothing.
Have you looked into replacement discs?
No, but you know what?
I just got an email from a doctor in New York, and he told me he was doing it.
And so I'm going to call him in this next couple of weeks to see if we can set
up an appointment.
Aljamain Sterling, the former UFC Bantamweight champion, he injured his neck
really badly
and then got fouled in a title fight.
Actually, it was very controversial because Pyotr Jan, the Russian cat who hit
him with
a knee to the head while he was down, lost his title that way.
So he lost his title because even though Aljamain's a sensational fighter,
everybody was giving
him shit because he won the title because of that.
So then he goes and gets a disc replaced in his neck, defends the title and
dominates Pyotr Jan
in the rematch, beats him in the rematch, and then goes on to defend the title
a couple
more times and then just lost it to Sugar Sean O'Malley.
But he's got an artificial disc in his neck.
It worked extremely well for him.
It worked.
And he's good.
He's good to go now.
I need to look into that.
Titanium.
It's a titanium articulating disc.
So instead of fusing the disc, this titanium, see if you can find it online,
Jamie, articulating
titanium disc replacement for spinal vertebrae, cervical, I think.
So Eddie Bravo has one in his lower back too.
So they do lower backs too.
Yeah, they do lower backs.
And what they do is they, this is what it looks like.
So they, instead of fusing your discs, which the problem with fusing your vertebrae
is you
no longer have any movement.
With this, it allows you to have movement.
And I think it lasts for a long fucking time.
You know, it's crazy.
I had a doctor when I broke my neck the second time.
He wanted me to do fusion and he told me that he's going to have to do three
levels and that
I'd have to retire.
And I was like, oh, that might not be an option.
It was the same doctor that Stone Cold Steve Austin had.
And Steve still has problems to this day with the fusion.
Everybody I know that had fusion has real problems.
Yeah.
See, that's why I'm nervous about getting it.
And that's why I'm glad I found this doctor in New York City that can do it.
I didn't know it was like there was no, there was a doctor out there that could
do that
kind of stuff.
I'll connect you to Al Jermaine.
We'll find out who he used.
But his results are excellent.
I mean, he went on to defend the title.
I mean, and, you know, wrestling.
He's a wrestler.
So, like, he got caught in neck cranks, guillotines, fought his way out of
stuff with this artificial disc.
That's crazy that he's fighting with an artificial disc.
Fighting and winning.
Fighting and winning against the best in the world.
That's ridiculous, man.
Incredible.
And it seems like that was a pretty quick turnover because that rematch, there
wasn't too much space in between.
Yeah, it was pretty quick.
I mean, I think he was back fighting within eight months.
You know what?
I was told that when you have that done, you literally are out of the hospital
and you're working out like three days later.
Yeah.
You know, it's like it doesn't really debilitate you that much.
Yeah.
You're back to your normal life pretty quickly.
I think it might.
I mean, I don't want to say.
I don't.
I'm obviously not a doctor.
I don't know if you knew that.
No.
I didn't.
It's I don't know what the best options are, but it's an option.
And I think it's probably a better option in some cases than fusion.
Oh, definitely.
Yeah.
Who wants metal in their neck?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You lose your mobility in your neck.
Yes.
Have you ever seen Yoel Romero run?
Yoel Romero got his neck fucked up in Cuba and they just fused the whole thing.
So his neck is like.
So when he runs, he see if you can find a video of Yoel Romero running.
His shoulders are up high.
He's watch.
Watch.
See what's going to run.
Oh, my God.
So his neck doesn't move.
No mobility at all.
Zero mobility.
Wow.
One of the best athletes that's ever competed in the UFC with a fused neck.
Oh, wow.
He, like, there's no flexibility there.
Yeah.
There's no movement.
There's no movement.
So the movement is all absorbed in the lower spine and, you know, obviously has
giant traps
and, you know, huge muscles.
Would that give him spinal damage down the road?
I mean, who knows?
I don't know, you know?
But, you know, he had this done quite a while ago.
This is when he was competing as an amateur wrestler.
Wow.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
And went on and was one of, I mean, fought for the title a couple times.
Was one of the best middleweights in the history of the UFC.
He was an animal and just couldn't move his neck.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
You're fighting.
You can't even turn your head.
Yeah.
The crazy thing is he could take a hell of a shot.
Yeah.
And I've always wondered if one of the reasons why he takes a hell of a shot is
that his neck
doesn't move.
It doesn't snap.
Like, it doesn't whip.
Yeah.
Like, when he gets hit.
Yeah.
You know, we've talked about this on the podcast so many times, but just the
physical abuse
that wrestlers take, both amateur wrestlers and then maybe even more so in the
pro wrestling
game.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
You know what?
I've been injured a lot in amateur wrestling.
A lot.
But nothing compares to pro wrestling.
I have been so beaten up there.
I barely was ever 100% healthy.
I would tear a hamstring or a groin or whatever.
That'd be something small.
And, you know, it would rehabilitate me a little bit, but I was still able to
work around it.
You learn as a pro wrestler how to work around injuries.
I actually wrestled Brock Lesnar in WrestleMania 19, the main event, with my
neck broken.
I had to have surgery the following day.
Wow.
Yeah.
So it's crazy.
The pro wrestling is just ridiculous.
You wrestle, you're on plywood.
There's a cloth above it, but it's literally hard like plywood.
You know, there's no spring under the ring or it's not a box spring or a bed.
It's plywood.
That's what you bump on.
That's so crazy.
Why do they do it that way?
I don't know, because it makes the sound.
Yeah, it makes the loud sound.
That's why they don't care about the health of people.
They just care about the sound it makes.
When you're at one live, it doesn't really translate to TV as cool as it is
live.
You hear that pop.
And they probably, I think they have microphones underneath and stuff.
Oh, they have microphones under there.
That accelerate it through the speakers and like, boom, boom.
It's very, very exciting.
It's one of those things that's a thousand times better live.
Isn't there a way they can like put a layer of wood and a layer of wood and
then the foam.
So the wood slams into the wood, but you feel the foam.
Well, if you do that, then they see your little feet pushing into the foam.
Yeah, how you get a run on it, yeah.
Yeah, I guess.
They're like, that's a bed.
I mean, not a foam like a bed.
I mean, a foam like a wrestling mat.
Like something.
Yeah.
That might work.
Yeah.
It's not a bad idea.
Better for the athletes.
Definitely.
You know, like a tumble track or something.
Like something that has some give to it.
Well, hopefully WWE's listening.
Well, the UFC and the WWE are together now.
Yes, they are.
Which is very interesting.
Very interesting.
That's a gigantic corporation.
Do you think they're going to cross the route?
I don