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Liam Payne beats Olympic winner in wrestling match

Written by . Published: November 29 2013

One Direction star Liam Payne overcame an Olympic gold medal winner to emerge victorious in a wrestling match.


The British singer took part in the game as part of his band's 1D Day promotional event, a seven-hour live webstream which they filmed on Saturday (23Nov13).


Payne, who has long harbored a dream of becoming a professional wrestler, took on champion Kurt Angle, who won gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia and was a regular with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).


The singer dressed in a yellow and green suit, complete with a mask, emblazoned with his wrestling stage name The Payne Train, and managed to floor Angle to claim victory in the ring.


Payne's bandmate Zayn Malik was ringside for the match, and he laughed about his friend's surprising victory, saying "Usually Liam just gets beaten up on the tour bus!... It's the first time I've seen him flip like that!"


After the fight, Angle joked about his defeat to a pop star: "It's gonna haunt me the rest of my life."


The seven-hour show also featured a guest appearance by supermodel Cindy Crawford, who taught the boyband stars how to perfect a runway walk, while Harry Styles and Niall Horan recreated the iconic pottery wheel scene from Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze's movie Ghost.


The comedy skits also included the boys posing with lookalikes named Wrong Direction, Styles attempting to cook a meal and failing, and a number of bizarre world record challenges.

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