Kurt Angle on final WWE run: ‘I looked like crap’
Kurt Angle has a hard time watching his final WWE run, admitting that he “looked like crap” before retirement.
On a new episode of The Undertaker’s Six Feet Under podcast, Angle appeared as the guest and discussed his 2017 return to WWE. Angle felt like he was wrestling pretty well at the time, but Vince McMahon wanted him to be inducted into the Hall of Fame and then serve as the general manager of Raw before competing. Once McMahon decided to have him wrestle, Angle’s knees were in such bad condition that he couldn’t perform like he wanted to.
“When I came back, I was wrestling really good, but Vince had a different idea,” Angle said. “He wanted to induct me into the Hall of Fame first, before I wrestled. So I did the Hall of Fame and then Vince came to me and said, ‘Hey, we want to make you the GM of Raw.’ And I said, ‘Vince, I want to wrestle.’ He said, ‘We’ll get to that.’ So he makes me GM of Raw. And during this time, my knees are arthritic and they’re getting tighter and I’m less active. And for eight months, I didn’t do anything. Then all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Kurt, I want you to wrestle.’ That’s going to be a problem [laughs].
“Literally, when I got in there, I looked like crap. I mean, I couldn’t do anything. It made me want to retire earlier than I wanted to. That’s why I retired with Baron Corbin at WrestleMania [35]. Because I didn’t want people to look at me and say, ‘Gosh, he used to be great, but now…’ I didn’t want that. So I decided this is it.”
Angle underwent a double knee replacement in 2022 that has helped things. His neck is in rough shape, though, with Angle unable to feel either one of his pinkies and also getting pain down his arms. Angle said he’s tried different methods like stem cell treatment and exploring possible surgery, but there’s nothing he can do except deal with it.
“I feel pretty good. The only thing that bothers me now is I have motor skill problems,” Angle said. “My hands shake, because my neck is so bad. And there’s nothing I can do about it. My neck naturally fused together, I think I already told you that. So I don’t have any more discs in between my vertebrae. It just all fused together, it’s all bone. I went to have disc replacement surgery, and the doctor took an MRI. He said, ‘You don’t have any discs.'”
The 56-year-old Angle said he’s just glad his knees work, preferring to deal with neck issues rather than knee pain.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.