Kurt Angle has proven himself as an Olympic athlete, and he’s also proven himself inside the squared circle. Over the years there were various rumors regarding Angle potentially making the jump to MMA, and he was offered a deal back in 1997.
During an appearance on The Hannibal TV the WWE Hall of Famer talked about the offer, and he noted that UFC was a very different company at the time.
“It was money. The MMA at the time, the UFC when they approached me it was in 1997. Dana White was not involved at the time and there was a woman there that was in charge. She called me and said, ‘Hey, we’d like you to enter the UFC and we’ll give you a 10 fight deal.’ And the money wasn’t that great. It was $15,000 a fight so I wasn’t going to get my butt kicked for $15,000 for each fight. That would have been brutal.”
Kurt Angle went on to say that he considered crossing over later in his career after the UFC became a bigger company, but he realized that MMA wasn’t an option for him due to his previous neck issues.
“I did some training. This was back in 2008-2009. I did some training at the Pittsburgh Fight Club. I was getting pretty good but I knew at the time that after breaking my neck several times, I had no strength in my upper body. I would have left myself open to submissions with my arms. I just didn’t have any strength. I couldn’t do five push-ups at the time. So it was very difficult for me to crossover into MMA when I wasn’t at a 100%. I knew I couldn’t do it.”
H/T Sportskeeda
