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Kurt Angle Thinks He’d Be Greatest Of All Time If He Stayed With WWE 20 Years

By John Canton • Published 31st July 2023
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Kurt Angle thinks if he was a WWE lifer in pro wrestling then he might be even more highly regarded in the business.

After winning an Olympic Gold Medal in 1996, Kurt Angle decided to try the pro wrestling thing a couple of years later. Angle was considered a natural after signing with WWE. Angle’s televised debut match was at Survivor Series 1999 while his retirement match came 20 years later at WrestleMania 35 in 2019.

Angle had one of the best rookie years in WWE history by becoming WWE Champion just eleven months after his debut and he was main eventing pay-per-views before that. During his WWE career, Angle was six-time WWE World Champion and was considered by many people to be one of the best wrestlers alive for many years during that run.

Even though Angle was a main eventer for many years and a top guy, he moved on in the summer of 2006 due to his issues with alcohol and painkillers. Angle needed a break from the grueling WWE schedule.

That led to Angle signing with TNA Wrestling in October 2006. That run with TNA/Impact would last ten years until 2016 with Angle winning the TNA World Title six times as well. Angle was inducted into the TNA/Impact Hall of Fame in 2013.

In 2017, Kurt Angle made his return “home” to WWE in the Hall of Fame, which would also lead to a run as Raw General Manager and several matches after that.

A big “what if” in pro wrestling regarding Angle is what would his career be like if he never left WWE at all and had a legendary run in the company the way guys like Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Triple H, John Cena, Randy Orton and others did?

Kurt Angle Offers His Opinion On His Legacy If He Stayed In WWE

On a recent episode of his Kurt Angle Show podcast, the WWE & TNA Hall of Famer was asked if he could change anything in his career. Angle confidently said if he never left WWE he thinks he might be considered the greatest wrestler of all time.

“I don’t regret going to TNA. I absolutely love TNA, I love my eleven years there. I probably would have stayed if the money didn’t run out. I knew it was my time to go back to WWE and I wanted to finish my career where I started.”

“If I go back, the one thing I would love to change is that I wish I didn’t get injured so much. That’s what caused my painkiller problem and my painkiller problem caused me to leave WWE. I felt like if I wasn’t going to leave, I was going to end up doing something bad, which was overdose on painkillers. I thought it was right for me to leave.”

“If I wouldn’t have left the WWE, and I would have wrestled there 20 straight years, I really believe, to this day, I’d be the greatest of all time. That’s not me blowing smoke, that’s me being honest. I think I would be considered the greatest of all time if I would have stuck with WWE for 20 years.”

On another Kurt Angle note, today is the 27-year anniversary of when Angle won a Gold Medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Kurt may have mentioned it in his pro wrestling career about 5,000 times or so.

H/T Fightful