By mid-2005 Kurt Angle was fully established as one of the WWE’s biggest stars, but behind the scenes, his life was falling apart.
A catalog of injuries had begun to take its toll in a serious way, and as a result, the star was in the depths of a serious addiction to painkillers. Combined with what he felt was poor creative, and Angle was incredibly frustrated and far from happy with life in WWE.
In fact, a little over a year later he left the company altogether, a move that was at least in part down to his well-documented addiction and injury issues.
Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast, The Kurt Angle Show, the WWE Hall of Famer recalled life with WWE during this period, specifically his role at ECW One Night Stand 2005.
The event was a ‘one night only’ relaunch of ECW and featured crowd-pleasing moments involving Joey Styles, Paul Heyman, and other ECW legends. The show ended with a wild brawl that saw Angle get choked out by Taz (despite Taz now being an announcer) and Stone Cold hit a Stunner on Eric Bischoff as the event went off the air.
Looking back on the event Angle said that the spot was designed to teach him a lesson, and admits that he probably deserved it. The legend explained that due to his addiction problems, he had become increasingly difficult to be around, so WWE was right to try and send him a message.
“I will tell you this, it was all my fault. At this point in my career, I was a real pain in the ass. Okay, listen, I was addicted to painkillers I was hiding, I was hiding it, I was getting injured all the time. I was really frustrated with creative because of the Sharmell thing and all this stuff.
I just felt like I kept lashing out and saying, ‘Oh, why are you guys doing this? You know, you need to change things, I need something better than this.’ And I was always demanding everything. And I think the company said you know what, we need to put this guy in his place. And that’s what they did. And I don’t blame them for that.
I’m not kissing their ass by any means, but I was a real asshole. And I can’t believe I was that way because that’s not me. But you know, I’ve been addicted to the painkillers and getting injuries and being so frustrated all the time. I was lashing out and I definitely deserve that. So it was them teaching me a lesson basically because I was one of the top guys in the company. They don’t normally do that to the top guys in the company, but they had to do that to me at this point in time.”
Kurt Angle Did Have Plenty Of Happy WWE Memories
Speaking on a different episode, Kurt Angle looked back at some of the happier moments from his first WWE run. The former World Champion named the famous milk truck segment with Steve Austin and Stephanie McMahon as the favourite moment of his WWE career.
If you use any of the quotes from this article please credit the original source with a h/t back to Inside The Ropes.