Angle ready to rumble in Cape

Just off a plane that took him from Montreal, where he performed the night before, to Omaha, Neb., where he will perform later that night, World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Kurt Angle is already having to do phone interviews.

Such is the glamorous life of a big-time professional wrestler.

"I usually spend 16 to 20 days a month on the road," Angle said from his hotel room. "You really have to love the business to be in it. Your life is the business."

But Angle said having a wife and 2-year-old daughter he does not get to see very often is difficult.

"It's something you have to commit to as a family," he said of his professional wrestling career that started five years ago.

Angle came to professional wrestling through a stellar amateur wrestling career that ultimately led the Pittsburgh native to a gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.

Instead of making Angle's wrestling alter-ego into an all-American hero, the then WWF made his into a smug, arrogant villain fans could love to hate.

On Monday, Angle will be at the Show Me Center in Cape Girar-deau as part of WWE's Smackdown Live that will feature a title match between John Bradshaw Layfield and the Big Show and a six-man tag team grudge match with Angle, Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak up against Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio and Funaki.

"This is going to be major," Angle said of the teaming with Reigns and Jindrak, which he calls his faction. "I finally built a group of men I think will be the most powerful group of men in wrestling."

Angle's faction has been out in force for a few weeks now, reeking havoc wherever it goes, pulling nasty pranks on people.

"We're kind of the bullies at WWE," he said.

While he prefers to wrestle alone and be the center of attention, Angle said the six-man tag team is exciting and entertaining for the audience to watch and puts less stress on his neck, which he had to have surgery on in April 2003 to fix two herniated discs that were pressing on his spinal cord.

Although he is back after a short break in which he remained on WWE as Smackdown's general manager, Angle knows the injury affects his future in wrestling.

"My neck will never be 100 percent healed," Angle said. "God willing, I can continue to be in this business another two to three years."

Long enough, he hopes, to become considered one of the best in the business.

According to Angle, the career of professional wrestlers can last 10 to 12 years if they are lucky and are not knocked out by falling popularity or injuries, neither which are hard to come by in the WWE.

"We're risking our bodies on everything that we do," Angle said. "The fans' expectations are so high that if we don't give it to them they're disappointed. We're putting our bodies on the line for the fans."

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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