If there's one thing Kurt Angle knows a thing or two about, it's winning championships; he beat Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to become the WWE Champion in 2000, became the inaugural TNA World Heavyweight Champion in a King of the Mountain match that also featured AJ Styles, Chris Harris, Christian Cage, and Samoa Joe, and even beat Brock Lesnar to become the second-ever IWGP Third Belt Champion, which is pretty impressive, even though the strap isn't remembered particularly strongly in hindsight.

So, when the “Olympic Hero” declares that he believes that a performer never received their due respect, let alone their titles, it should be taken plenty seriously, especially when he has a ton of in-ring experience wrestling the performer in question.

Who, you may ask, does Angle believe WWE didn't utilize correctly? Well, that would be the “Samoan Submission Machine” himself, Samoa Joe, who was booked well in TNA alongside the “Olympic Hero” but didn't receive the same level of respect on the WWE main roster.

“Joe, he got utilized properly in TNA at the beginning. Until he lost his undefeated streak against me, his value dropped dramatically. They've never really picked back up and brought Joe back to the level he was when he was undefeated,” Angle said on his podcast via WrestleTalk.

“I think that WWE could have done more with him. They did do some, they did a lot, but I know they could have done more. He was that talented. I'm not sure if it had to do with his look. I love his look. I think that everybody should be different; big, tall, short, wide. Doesn't matter. I don't know if it had to do with his look, but Samoa Joe was so talented. He deserved to be a WWE Champion, he really did. Probably and that's not me blowing smoke; that's me being honest.

“Joe and I had the best chemistry. We always threw our two cents worth in, and we were always agreeable. I mean, if there was an idea that Joe liked, I liked it, too. If there's an idea that I liked, Joe liked it, too. We were more compatible than any other wrestlers, even more than AJ Styles and myself. Joe and I, it was almost like we were Frick and Frack like we were related. You know, like we were twins because we thought the same way. We both had the same ideas, the same concepts.”

Would it have been cool to see Joe on top of the card in WWE? Yes, though injuries clearly affected his run, there were plenty of opportunities to belt up the “Samoan Submission Machine,” even if the promotion opted against it. Fortunately, with two different reigns with the TNT Title in AEW and a run with the Ring of Honor TV Title going strong at 448 days and counting, it's clear Tony Khan picked up the slack where Vince McMahon dropped the ball.

Kurt Angle reveals how he developed the “Wrestling Machine.”

Speaking of booking decisions during the Vince McMahon era, Kurt Angle was asked on his podcast about where he liked to wrestle on the card, and explained how that changed during one of the most serious segments of his WWE career.

“Well honestly, I don’t care where I am on the card if I’m not the main event, which I knew we weren’t gonna be, ’cause we weren’t a world title match. So I’d prefer to go on first, and I was happy with that being on first… Paul [Heyman] wanted me to dominate. He wanted me, you know, the longest match he wanted me to have is the match I had with Randy, so he wanted me to dominate. He wanted me to be the face of the company along with Rob Van Dam. And they wanted me to be this wrestling machine. They didn’t want me to do any gimmicks or anything, just full-bred wrestling. A lot of suplexes, less punches, all wrestling. That’s what they wanted.”

Asked how the “Wrestling Machine” gimmick came into being, Angle noted that it was his idea, even if Mr. McMahon was onboard with it too.

“You know what, I came up with it. Vince McMahon came to me and said, ‘Listen, we need to stop doing the funny stuff. I want you to be taken more seriously.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine’. I said, ‘What do you want from me?’ He said, ‘I just want a really intense Kurt Angle.’ I said, ‘How about the wrestling machine?’ He said that’, that’s a good idea,’ So that’s how it all started and it was my idea,” Angle said. “And I ran into it and I ran with it actually. Yeah, it worked out really well. Unfortunately, it didn’t last that long ’cause I wasn’t in the WWE long after that. But, for the very beginning in ECW, it worked.”

Is the “Wrestling Machine” remembered as fondly as Angle's initial run as the “Olympic Hero” or his more comedic angles with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? No, probably not, but in a career that spanned some 20 years, it was an important chapter in a Hall of Fame legacy.