Kurt Angle went through a dark period in his career in 2006. The former world champion was working through many injuries and the pain caused him to get addicted to painkillers.
The Olympic Gold Medallist was not only harming himself with the addiction but he got out of control to a point where he started sending threatening text messages to Vince McMahon.
Angle opened up about the time during the latest episode of his podcast. He recalled how he started behaving out of control because of his problem:
“Up until 2006 we were pretty close but my behavior became erratic, I started behaving out of control, sending Vince text messages threatening to beat him up. I had the painkiller problem that nobody knew about.”
The former WWE champion explained that he wasn’t able to take time off because a lot of other talents were on the shelf. This led to him sending more and more texts to Vince McMahon:
“I was texting Vince more and more and he wouldn’t respond and that pissed me off even more. After I joined ECW it got even worse. [I sent those texts] because he wouldn’t get back to me. I understand why now, I wasn’t making any sense.
When I went to a meeting with Vince after I decided to leave after ECW 2006, he had a whole list of text messages and I’m reading these saying ‘Gosh, I don’t remember texting this.’ It was really graphic, ‘I’m going to beat the sh** out of you.’”
Kurt Angle finally decided to quit WWE only a month after he was moved to ECW. He was granted an early release from his contract in August 2006.