Painful bumps are part of wrestling, and Kurt Angle knows all about them. The old line of it all being fake doesn’t hold water with the knowledge fans have of the sport. Bumps are real, bad landings hurt, even good landings hurt. Pulling off a move can hurt just as much as taking a move. Injuries are real. Yes, there are storylines built around them, and certain poetic license may be used, but beneath it, is a single constant. Wrestling is a dangerous sport that hurts those that practice it.
Talking during a recent episode of The Kurt Angle Podcast, the show’s star talked about the most painful injury he ever got in the squared circle. Fans will undoubtedly guess the match, but not the spot that caused it.
It was 2001, King of the Ring, and THAT match against Shane McMahon. While the infamous glass shot left both men battered and bloody, it was an earlier spot that Kurt Angle credits for causing him the worst pain he ever experienced.
Coming after a suplex on the concrete, Kurt Angle was left in the position of needing to finish a brutal match with a brutal injury that nobody could see.
Kurt Angle is One Tough Son of a Gun
“Yeah, I cracked my tailbone, it was extremely painful,” Angle said. “I never felt pain like that in my life. It ran down my legs, I could barely stand up and I knew I had to finish the match, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I was clueless about how I was going to finish the match because it hurt so bad.”
“Without a doubt, a 10 or 11, it was that painful. I never had pain like that, especially the way it ran down my legs. It grabbed a hold of my nerves that ran down my legs and it was just thumping the whole time. I couldn’t bend over, I had to stay standing up straight, my positioning was all messed up. I couldn’t really do much, I was supposed to carry Shane back to the ring after the glass spot and I couldn’t. Thank god I grabbed a cart to bring him back.”
Coming from the man who won an Olympic gold medal with a broken frigging neck, it must have been a very painful injury indeed.
