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WWE recently made headlines when they signed Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson to a NIL contract.
Over the years, a number of athletes have successfully transitioned to professional wrestling. Companies usually have scouts tasked with bringing over competitors from other sports.
WWE, in particular, has an affinity for signing Olympic athletes since it's guaranteed a high-caliber athlete who can bring mainstream publicity.
Here are 5 times WWE signed Olympic athletes.
#5. Chad Gable wrestled for Team USA in the 2012 Olympics
A precocious professional wrestler with a successful amateur career, Chad Gable immediately earned comparisons with Kurt Angle. Angle has also showered Gable with praise on numerous occasions. During an episode of The Kurt Angle Show, he said:
"I think Chad Gable has so much potential. And I know the company started pushing him, and then they laid off, and pushed him and laid off. I don’t know if it has anything to do with his size, but the guy is amazing. You know, in real life, he could whoop any of those wrestlers. So, you know, he’s a real-life bada**. To not have him go to the main event level where he deserves to be, just blows my mind. Because he is very talented. Great technical wrestler, former Olympian, you can’t ask for anything more than that.”
Prior to signing with WWE, Gable competed for Team USA at the 2012 Olympics in freestyle wrestling. He made it to the lower half of the draw's quarterfinals where he lost to Pablo Shorey.
#4. Mark Henry was an Olympic weightlifter before his WWE career
Before he was putting his opponents in the Hall of Pain, Mark Henry was a two-time Olympic weightlifter. Henry has also won the US National Weightlifting Championship, the NACAC Championship, the Olympic Festival Championship, the Arnold Classic, and the US Open.
When he was just 19-years-old, Henry qualified for the 1992 Olympics as a super heavyweight. Though he finished 10th, Henry impressed a number of veterans who said that he was a generational talent.
Following the 1992 Olympics, The World's Strongest Man was determined to make a mark on the sport. He also qualified for the 1996 Olympics and in the build-up to the Atlanta games received a tremendous amount of mainstream coverage. This was when Vince McMahon took the opportunity to contact Henry, a lifelong professional wrestling fan.
Unfortunately, Henry couldn't perform up to his standard at the Olympics due to a back injury. He retired after the Olympics and declared that he wouldn't return unless the sport had cleared its PED issues. He then put pen to paper on a ten-year contract with WWE and went on to have a Hall-of-Fame career with the promotion.
#3. Bad News Brown was an amazing judoka
Before he started his professional wrestling career, former WWE Superstar Bad News Brown was one of the best judokas on the planet. Brown was awarded a black belt after two-and-a-half years of training.
In his career, Brown won five AAU heavyweight championships and two gold medals in the Pan American Games. He relocated to Japan in 1970 and enrolled at Nihon University for a two-year period. Unfortunately, he suffered a serious knee injury while participating in the Olympic trials. This injury ruled him out of the 1972 Olympics.
Brown recovered from the injury and started training rigorously for the 1976 Olympics. It seemed he would be heartbroken again when he wasn't selected for Team USA, but Brown eventually made the cut after the United States Judo Assocation took the United States Olympic committee to court.
Brown went on to win a bronze medal and was the first African-American to medal in an individual event outside boxing or running. Due to politics, Bad News Brown retired and became a professional wrestler. Following an initial stint with NJPW, he joined WWE in 1978.
#2. Ronda Rousey won bronze at the Olympics
A revolutionary in women's sports and a massive box-office attraction during her UFC run, Ronda Rousey was one of the biggest signings in WWE history. In addition to being part of the first women's match to main event WrestleMania, Rousey was also one of the driving forces behind WWE's deal with FOX.
Before she started her MMA career, Rousey became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in Judo when she captured a bronze in the 2008 games. The California native started training for judo when she was 11 with her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, the first American to win gold in the World Judo Championships.
Rousey took to judo like a duck to water and became the youngest competitor to qualify for the 2004 Olympics. After losing to the eventual silver medal winner, she captured gold in the World Junior Judo Championships that same year. Rousey also added a silver medal at the World Judo Championships and a gold at the Pan American games before ended here judo career with the 2008 Olympics.
Rousey made a few sporadic WWE appearances before she started her run with the company at the 2018 Royal Rumble.
#1. Kurt Angle was WWE's first Olympic gold medalist
A two-time NCAA Division I Champion and a three-time All-American, WWE legend Kurt Angle found great success in collegiate wrestling. After graduating, he won a gold medal at the 1995 FILA World Wrestling Championships and started training for the Olympics under the tutelage of Dave Schultz.
After his mentor was tragically murdered, Angle joined the Dave Schultz Wrestling Club in his memory. When Angle won the Olympic trials for freestyle wrestling, he suffered even more misfortune with a severe neck injury.
Despite rehabilitating for five months, Angle needed to take numerous pain-killing injections to compete in the Olympics. But he gritted his way through the competition and defeated Abbas Jadidi to win the heavyweight gold medal in freestyle wrestling.
Kurt Angle signed with WWE two years later despite initially being reluctant to pursue a career in professional wrestling.
