Gable Steveson Appears On SmackDown With Kurt Angle
Gable Steveson made his Smackdown debut to join in on the celebration for Kurt Angle’s birthday.
The connection between Kurt Angle and Gable Steveson is an obvious one. They are the only two Olympic Gold Medalists in WWE history. Angle won (with a broken freakin’ neck) Olympic Gold as a freestyle wrestler at the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996. Steveson won Olympic Gold as a freestyle wrestler at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were pushed back one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing the games from happening in 2020.
In September 2021, after making an appearance at SummerSlam 2021 with his gold medal, Steveson officially signed with WWE. There were rumors that he would be fast-tracked to the main roster including a big push right away, but it didn’t happen that quickly. In the October 2021 WWE Draft, Steveson was drafted to the Raw brand even though he had never had a match in WWE before.
At WrestleMania 38, Steveson hit Chad Gable with a suplex to show that he was making some progress as a pro wrestler.
Gable Steveson officially started training at the WWE Performance Center in October 2022. At 22 years old, he is still very young and has a lot of years in WWE ahead of him.
On the December 9th edition of Smackdown, Steveson was shown arriving to the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh with Angle, who was in his hometown. They were greeted by Braun Strowman, who shook their hands and threw in the line about Gable training at the WWE PC to let the fans know.
In the main event segment, Angle was out in the ring for a promo when the Alpha Academy’s Chad Gable & Otis showed up to try to ruin the fun. That led to Steveson riding out in a milk truck. Angle and Steveson threw some milk bottles at Gable & Otis followed by Angle using a milk hose to douse Gable & Otis in the ring. Milk-O-Mania was running wild for the second time in Angle’s career.
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WHAT AN INCREDIBLE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!@RealKurtAngle@GableSteveson#SmackDownpic.twitter.com/NiT8R3ycvP
— WWE (@WWE) December 10, 2022
If you want to feel old, Steveson was only one year old when Angle did the milk truck spraying on Steve Austin and the Alliance in the summer of 2001.
By putting Steveson with Angle and having a confrontation with Gable & Otis, it could be the start of a storyline where Angle may be a manager/mentor of sorts for Steveson or perhaps even tag up with Steveson against Gable & Otis at a major show like WrestleMania 39. WWE likely put Steveson on Smackdown with Angle for a reason. At some point, there may even be a turn too because that’s pro wrestling.
Gable Steveson’s brother Bobby is already a regular on the NXT brand as Damon Kemp. It’s unknown if WWE will acknowledge them as brothers when Steveson starts wrestling on WWE television.