Kurt Angle competed in his first WWE match in more than a decade last Sunday night when WWE’s hand was forced because illness swept through the WWE locker room.
Even though Angle’s return to the ring was just the selling point that the company needed for TLC, it seems that the company never had plans to allow Angle to step back into the ring following his return.
Jerry Lawler recently talked about Angle’s return on his podcast Dinner With The King where he revealed the fact that Kurt Angle told him the company didn’t want him to work as an in-ring performer.
He said: “Kurt and I talked at length about that [in the past], how much he wanted to still wrestle with WWE. He was happy with the contract and happy to be back with the WWE, but he was not crazy about the fact, I guess they had already told him that they didn’t think they wanted him to do things like get in the ring and wrestle.”
It seems that when Kurt Angle returned to replace Mick Foley as Raw General Manager following this year’s WrestleMania, he was never supposed to be seen as anything but an authority figure on the company’s flagship show.
Thankfully, the wrestling world is one that is forever changing and even though the circumstances surrounding Angle’s return would not be wished on the company again, having the Olympic gold medalist return to the ring allowed the company to make the best out of a bad situation.
