WWE Legend Admits They “Looked Like An Old Man” During Final Matches
A WWE legend wanted more from their retirement run.
In early 2017, Kurt Angle returned to WWE after spending several years with TNA. The veteran would go on to return to the ring before finally retiring at WrestleMania 35 following a defeat to Baron Corbin.
Angle had made his debut with the company at Survivor Series in late 1999.
Following his retirement, Angle launched his own podcast before signing up as a commentator for Eric Bischoff’s Real American Freestyle Wrestling. The promotion held its first event on August 30.
During an appearance on Six Feet Under with The Undertaker, Angle looked back on his final run with WWE. He said that he looked like an old man in the ring, describing those matches as “brutal.”
“When I watched myself wrestle in WWE my last year, I looked like an old man in the ring…I was like ‘Wow, this is brutal.’ I couldn’t even look at myself. So I knew I had to have knee replacements. I had so much pain in my knees, arthritis, and so much damage there.”
Angle said that when he came back to the company in 2017, he wanted to continue wrestling after being inducted into the Hall of Fame. However, Vince McMahon disagreed and made him Raw General Manager.
“Vince had a different idea… 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,” Angle recounted. “Then all of a sudden he’s like, Kurt, I want you to wrestle. Uh, that’s gonna be a problem [laughs].
I 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…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.”
WWE Hall Of Famer Kurt Angle Details Physical Struggles
Throughout his time in the amateur ranks and later in WWE and TNA, Angle became famous for working through injuries and competing at a high level despite major physical struggles. Unsurpsiringly, this approach came at a heavy cost.
Angle added that while a double knee replacement has relieved the pain in his legs, he’s still having major issues with his neck. This causes pain down his arms, his hands to shake, and he has no feeling in two of his fingers.
“The only thing that bothers me now is I have motor skill problems. My hands shake ‘cause my neck is so bad. And there’s nothing I can do about it. My neck naturally fused together… so I don’t have any more discs in between my vertebrae.
I get pain going down my arms. My pinkies, I can’t feel either one of my pinkies. They’re gone. So, I just have a lot of functional problems… There’s just nothing. I have to deal with it.”
In an earlier interview, Kurt Angle admitted that he can’t can’t back in the ring because of his physical condition. The former World Champion admitted that he’d to have been part of John Cena’s retirement tour but his body won’t allow it.
John Cena is set to make his final WWE SmackDown appearance on September 5. Cena made his main roster debut on the blue brand when he confronted Angle back in June 2002. In piece of nostalgic symetry, Cena’s last SmackDown will be in the same venue where he made his debut.
H/t to WrestlingNews.Co