Kurt Angle On 'Warrior,' Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton

He already holds an Olympic Gold Medal and several World Heavyweight Championship titles. Now, TNA superstar Kurt Angle is facing off with Hollywood. Appearing opposite Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, Angle stars in the film Warrior as the Russian mixed-martial arts champ, Koba.

Angle, who was born in Pittsburgh, Penn., started wrestling at the age of 6 and continued throughout high school and college. While training for the Olympics in 1996, Angle suffered severe neck and back injuries, but nevertheless, recovered and received the Gold Medal in the heavyweight class. Angle originally turned down an offer from the World Wrestling Federation, but signed a contract with them in 1998. During his time with WWF, he held both the European Championship and Intercontinental Championship and eventually the WWF Championship. After he left WWF he joined TNA where he went on to win the TNA Triple Crown, as well as other TNA Championships, giving him a total of 20 championships throughout his career.

Angle has managed to rack up some acting roles while simultaneously wrestling. For Kurt Angle, playing Koba, a Russian mixed-martial arts trainer was not a foreign persona from his real one. “With my background, I got to throw around the stunt double, Sammy, quite a bit,” he told Uinterview exclusively. “I got to beat him up, and they kept telling me, ‘The harder you punch him and the more you throw him, the more money he’ll get.’ So I got really intense and pretty cranked up.”