Kurt Angle is a former United States and World Champion in Freestyle Wrestling. He shocked the world by winning the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta with an exciting and controversial victory over Abbas Jadidi of Iran. The image of Angle crying while carrying the American flag is one of the most vivid images of the ’96 Games. He then joined the ranks of the World Wrestling Federation in 1998, where he will compete in the main event of SummerSlam on August 27 after only being with the company for nine months.

FOXSports.com: When you were young, why did you choose wrestling over other sports such as basketball and football?

Kurt Angle: Because it was an individual sport. It was one on one, and I liked the attention of just me being out there , me being responsible for what’s going on. I decided early on that I wanted to be a wrestler rather than be involved in team sports, although I did team sports. And it’s important to learn how to work as a team because in life you can’t do things on your own. Even me in wrestling as an individual I had people helping me.

FOXSports.com: Did you dream of being an Olympian as a child?

Kurt Angle: Ever since I was 7 years old I've always known I was going to do something special, something that would make my family proud because I had four older brothers that were wrestlers. And I always thought that I could do something that they never could, or something that they could help me with. You never quite know until you’re there, though, and I didn’t know I was going to win at the Olympics until I won the gold. It’s one of those iffy things. You just have to hope you’re having your best day at that time and everything goes into action the way you’d like it to.

FOXSports.com: I know that David Schultz was a mentor and idol to you. What did his death mean to you personally and to the ’96 team overall? Was it more of an inspiration or an obstacle to overcome?

Kurt Angle: It was both really. Dave was really important to my training because he was my coach. And although he was trying out for the Olympic Games, and I honestly believe he would have made the team and would have won a medal, he was my coach. He was my mentor, the guy that I looked up to and the guy I needed to go that extra yard for . When David died, part of me died because I didn’t really know where I was going to go to seek help. For about two weeks I didn’t do much of anything. But then I thought that David would want me to pursue my dream and achieve my goals. So, I went to Greg Strobel of USA Wrestling and also Dan Gable from the University of Iowa, and I started training with those guys as much as I could. I kind of used Dave for inspiration because he always told me that you never want to go into something unprepared. You always want to be prepared as possible so that you have no regrets.

FOXSports.com: Why Freestyle wrestling over Greco-Roman wrestling?

Kurt Angle: Freestyle in the United States is very much more competitive than Greco-Roman. Worldwide they’re about equal, but Freestyle is the more popular sport, and I always wanted to excel in the most popular form of wrestling in the U.S. It was a lot harder making the Olympic team, but if you make the U.S. Olympic team, you’re definitely one of the top six wrestlers in the world. And that’s a hard thing to say because wrestling isn't an American sport. We’re doing their (the world's) sport and if you win a gold medal in their sport, that’s pretty special. But I always wanted to excel in Freestyle. It’s a more versatile sport; you attack both the upper and lower body. I was always considered a quick and versatile wrestler, and I loved to attack the lower body.

FOXSports.com: Two weight classes, including your own, were removed from the Olympic program. Do you feel that these changes are valid, and do you think that you would have qualified under the current guidelines?

Kurt Angle: The change would have been to my advantage because I was eight pounds underweight at the Olympics. The weight class was 220, but most of the guys were 245 and I weighed 212. I’m not going to say I would've had an easier time because you can never say that. The reason they cut them out was because the other combat sports had only eight weight classes, which is crazy because wrestling is so much more popular worldwide than boxing and jujitsu (Taekwondo, not jujitsu, is the other Olympic combat sport). The other sports were complaining because wrestling had two more weight classes so they took them out.