Former WWE Champion and Olympic gold medallist, Kurt Angle has found himself at the centre of a meme frenzy all because he awkwardly stared at a camera for a bit too long.
The man is quite a performer and served a wide-eyed look that immediately drew in many followers.🥇🇺🇲 #ProWrestling #Wrestling #OlympicWrestling #Olympics #WWERaw #Smackdown #NXT #WWE #KurtAngle #AEW ♬ WWE: Medal (Kurt Angle) - WWE & Jim Johnston
In what was likely just an impromptu comedy bit has spiralled into a meme behemoth as its been hard to avoid Angle staring back at you on social media in the past few days. Even the Master of the 3 I’s would not have predicted the virality of his stare back in the day.
We then get the infamous Kurt Angle 1000-yard stare that deserves its own place in a Hall of Memes, if there’s one. If you’ve come this far, check out Kurt Angle reacting to becoming a meme machine with his viral 1000-yard stare here.
How the Meme Emerged
According to Know Your Meme, the first iteration of the joke occurred on December 3rd and has since been used to express bafflement at various inconveniences and general dark humour.
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He then stares dead into the camera and asks, “We done? Good, I can take a nap now.” Comments immediately identified the “Kurt Angle 1000 yard stare,” and began joking that his look of shock was relatable.
Other memes followed no phrasal template and instead crafted their own scenario that Angle's stare embodied. The Kurt Angle meme has garnered lots of comparisons to the precursor 1,000-yard stare meme which centers on a World War II era painting of a traumatized soldier originally created by American artist Thomas Lea. In the 21st century, the painting has become a meme, used to symbolize shock.
Overall, it's a rather simple trend and it's easy to track why this meme became so relevant so fast. Safe to say, this meme might run and run, oh it's true, it's true. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy.
Want to make a Kurt Angle meme of your own? Just right-click and save the video below, go into the video editing app CapCut, choose a background from your camera roll and then add the green screen video as a layer. For the full history of the Kurt Angle 1,000-Yard Stare, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's entry for even more information.
Kurt Angle’s Reaction
xQc reacts to Kurt Angle recreating the meme
It didn’t take long for Angle to learn he’d been meme’d and he wasn’t too pleased with it, to begin with. Speaking on Wrestling Life with Ben Veal, Angle said, “I was pissed at first. I was like, ‘Why are they making fun of me?’ Paul Bromwell, my co-host on the Kurt Angle show, was like, ‘Kurt they’re not making fun of it. This is actually a good thing.’ I was like, ‘it seems like everyone is making fun of me.’ ‘No, the look on your face was funny and they’re using it for memes.’”
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He decided, “Well, I might as well sell photos.”
Angle continued, “I started doing it, and thank you everyone who bought a meme photo because I made a substantial amount of money doing it. It was worth being the meme of the year. I guess I won an award for meme of the year already. It gave me good exposure.”
“There are people who don’t even know who I am that know who I am now because of it. I trended worldwide. I’m getting people ordering the photo from all different parts of the world. It’s crazy. This meme photo took on a life of its own and I tried to capitalize on it. I did, thank God. I think anybody would have done the same. If you can’t beat them, join them! And make some cold hard cash!
Kurt Angle meme and Hawk Tuah girl
On July 7, Kurt Angle posted a screenshot of himself doing the 1,000 yard stare below the caption: “The face I make when I ask my wife for some Hawk Tuah time. #itstrue.” The wrestler deleted the post, following it up the next day with a tweet reading “Your Olympic hero is in the dog house right now.
Uses of the Kurt Angle Meme
There’s no one category for how to use the Kurt Angle meme. Pretty much anything that shocks you, embarrasses you, flummoxes you, or steals your words right out of your mouth.
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Kurt Angle reflects on working WrestleMania 19 with a broken neck
Before he went viral for his “thousand yard stare,” Kurt Angle was know for winning Olympic gold with a broken (frickin’) neck. Angle also broke his neck ahead of facing Brock Lesnar in the main event of WrestleMania 19. He underwent neck surgery the very next day, but told Casino.org why he put the procedure off.
“I wasn’t supposed to wrestle at the event, but decided to do it at the last second. I asked my Doctor, ‘Can I go out there and wrestle if I protect my neck, will I be OK?’ - he said that he couldn’t guarantee that, but I decided to go out there anyway. You have to remember, back in 2003, you didn’t have to worry about any lawsuits. If you broke a neck today, there is no way a doctor would clear you to wrestle. They could be sued. There were no real lawsuits being held against doctors 22 years ago.”
Angle feared Lesnar broke his neck too
Angle not only delayed his neck surgery, but also feared Lesnar had suffered the same fate. Lesnar attempted his now-infamous Shooting Star Press but landed awkwardly on his neck and was concussed.
Despite the injury, Lesnar finished the match and defeated Angle to win the WWE Championship.
“I put my surgery off until the day after WrestleMania. So I went in there with a broken neck and just tried to protect it as much as I could. The match was awesome, it was as good as it could have been. The only negative is that Brock missed a Shooting Star Press. I thought for a second that he’d broken his neck, too. My first thought was ‘shoot, man’ - I’m going to have to hold this title for another month, because Brock won’t win here! That was selfish of me, considering at this point, Brock could have broken his neck.