Kurt Angle appeared on TKO recently while in the UK promoting WWE. According to comments Angle made on the show, he is currently dealing with the physical toll that his career has had on his body. Angle’s last official wrestling match of his career took place last year at WrestleMania. He lost to Baron Corbin on the show.
“I don’t know. I mean, I’m hurting pretty badly,” Angle responded when asked if he’d repeat what he did throughout his career. “My knees, my back, my neck. Sometimes I think about would I go back? My quality of life right now sucks. So, I do have a lot of suffering. I had a painkiller addiction that I overcame about 6 years ago. You know, staying clean and struggling the way I have been, it’s very difficult.”
Angle also spoke about the injuries he dealt with in his amateur career. In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Angle won a gold medal with a broken neck.
“I couldn’t get passed by any doctor. No doctor would pass me or would allow me to wrestle. So I eventually found a doctor and he said, the only thing you can do, you can’t train so we’ll just stick you in the neck with Novocain. Every match I had at trials and the Olympics I got 12 shots of Novocain in the back of my neck. I couldn’t feel it for about an hour. I go out and wrestle and then an hour later I’d be in a lot of pain.”
Angle went into further detail about his injuries, the Olympics in 96, and his pro-wrestling career. The full interview can be found in the player below:
h/t WrestlingNewsCO for transcriptions
