Before he was a “Wrestling Machine,” before he had a milk truck on standby, and before he was even a member of the WWE Universe, Kurt Angle was a member of the 1996 USA Olympic team, where he hoped to bring back the gold for his country after a successful career at Clarion University.
The only problem? Angle broke his neck during the Olympic trials and it looked like he might not be able to take part in the event, period.
Discussing how he was able to overcome such a brutal setback to have one of the all-time great Olympic moments in an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience last year, Angle revealed everything he had to go through in order to compete for his country and why, in the end, the risks he took with his health were worth it.
“What happened was, I got thrown on my head the first round of the Olympia trials and I broke my neck and didn’t know it so I kept wrestling. My arms were numb and my neck was in excruciating pain and I wrestled through semis and won and I had to go onto the finals and wrestle and I won there,” Angle explained via Generation Iron.
“I won the first round of Olympic trials with my neck broken. I went home the next day and went to the doctor and he took an MRI of my neck and said you have four broken vertebrates and two disks sticking directly in your spinal cord. He said you can’t wrestle anymore. You are done. I was devastated.
“It’s not gonna be completely healed but it will be healed enough that you can still go and what I’m gonna do is have a doctor travel with you and this doctor is gonna stick you with 12 shots of novocaine in your neck five minutes before each one of your matches. I didn’t have a choice. It was no guarantee I was going to make the Olympic team in 2000 or 2004. This is my one time. This is my one shot.”
Immediately dubbed the “Olympic Hero” by WWE when he cashed out of the amateur game – and briefly flirted with a career in UFC – for the squared circle, it’s safe to say Angle’s decision to go for it despite the risk paid off for him many times over from a financial and cultural significance standpoint. Then again, when you consider he broke his neck multiple more times following the Olympic trials, became addicted to Percocets, and has had to undergo multiple surgeries, including on his neck, in the near-30 years since his big moment, it’s safe to say the Pennsylvania native has paid for his decision many times over, too.
Kurt Angle is open to being a manager in WWE, but there’s a catch
Speaking of Angle’s WWE career, the Hall of Famer recently revealed on his podcast, The Kurt Angle Show, that he would be interested in returning to The Fed for a new role as a wrestling manager, but only if they pay him correctly for his time, which hasn’t always been the case in the past.
“I’m happy doing what I’m doing. But would I consider managing? Yeah, it would have to be the right thing. It would have to be the right deal, the right program. Not only that, but the money has to be right,” Kurt Angle explained on his podcast via Fightful.
“I will tell you this, I feel a little badly about doing this, but a few years ago, WWE wanted me to manage Matt Riddle. I was into it. I was like, okay, we could have some great vignettes. I think we would have had great chemistry, but it didn’t happen unfortunately because they didn’t offer me the right amount of money. The money they offered me was really not good. Not to say anything bad about the company, but it was like okay, that was kind of a kick to the nuts kind of an offer [laughs].”
After being featured in multiple segments with Gable Steveson during his bizarre tenure in WWE, with the other “Olympic Hero” being moved to NXT and ultimately released in order to allow him to pursue a third career as a pass rusher for the Buffalo Bills, fans have wondered if Angle could end up working with the other Gable, Chad Gable, now that he’s become a heel. While only time will tell if the promotion pulls that trigger into the future, as they would to seriously push the former leader of Alpha Academy to justify the deal, if the stars align and the money is right, it sure sounds like Angle would be into the idea.
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