Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle who is a former six times World Champion in WWE and a former six times TNA World Heavyweight Champion recently revealed that he was originally scheduled to win the first ever WWE Undisputed Championship instead of Chris Jericho.
WWE Championship and the WCW World Heavyweight Championship were unified after WCW officially died after their defeat against WWE at the Survivor Series pay per view event of 2001. The original plan was to run WCW as a parallel brand to WWE but it did not worked out pretty well since WWE failed to sign most of the WCW stars.
Kurt Angle Reveals He Was Originally Scheduled To Win The WWE Undisputed Championship
So they decided to stop the storyline between WWE and the Alliance at the Survivor Series pay per view event. WWE organised a Survivor Series 5 on 5 traditional tag team match between team WWE and team Alliance in which Alliance lost.
The next pay per view event was Vengeance where WWE booked a title unification match. To book this unification, the booked a four man tournament where the WWE champion Stone Cold Steve Austin defended his title against Kurt Angle and the World champion (WCW World Heavyweight championship was called the World Championship after the Alliance lost to WWE at Survivor Series) The Rock defended his title against Chris Jericho. Winner of both matches faced each other to unify the title.
The first match was the WWE championship match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kurt Angle which was won by Austin. The Rock lost his World Championship to Chris Jericho in the next match. And the final match was mostly dominated by Austin but a little bit of help from Booker T assisted Chris Jericho to unify the title and win the WWE Undisputed Championship.
It was seriously a huge thing for Jericho to beat both the Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin on the same night. This push officially cemented him as a main event star in WWE. At WrestleMania X-8 he went on to defend his title against Triple H on the main event.
Kurt Angle who is a former six times World Champion in WWE and a former six times TNA World Heavyweight Champion recently spoke on The Kurt Angle Show where he revealed that he was originally scheduled to win the first ever WWE Undisputed Championship instead of Chris Jericho. He said;
“The week before the PPV, I was still supposed to be Undisputed Champion. Vince McMahon had me picked as The Undisputed Champion. He wanted me to win the two titles. Vince came to me the week prior to the PPV and said, ‘Listen, is it ok if I give it to Jericho because I want to start pushing Jericho and I think this would be great for him.
“You should do that. I think Jericho needs it and this is a great opportunity for him.’ So I was supposed to win The Undisputed Championship but Vince McMahon changed it at the last second and gave it to Jericho.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription