Kurt Angle is without a doubt one of the most successful wrestlers in the history of the business, and he officially cemented his legacy a few years ago when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Angle’s list of accomplishments with WWE is impressive to say the least, but when WWE initially offered him a contract he declined the offer.
The former WWE Champion spoke to PWInsider about why he didn’t sign with WWE in 1996, and he explained that his agent talked him out of it.
“Well I wanted to sign, my agent wouldn’t let me. My agent was an NFL agent, his name is Ralph Cindrich and he repped a lot of the really big NFL athletes, so he was like, “You’re not doing this crap. FOX wants you to do a sportscasting job for FOX Pittsburgh, let’s get you that instead.” I wanted to sign a WWE deal because it was, you know, it was a really nice deal. For me, I never had money, you know, they’re giving me this multi-million dollar deal for 10 years and I thought it was a great opportunity but my agent said “No it’s crap – you’re real, they’re fake, don’t sign it,” and I sat on it, and after a couple of years I turned on RAW and I was glued to the TV. I loved the entertainment, the wrestling, the athleticism, you know, Stone Cold, Rock, Triple H, Undertaker, all those guys were doing their thing and I really, really enjoyed watching The Rock and Steve Austin and I decided I’m going to go in there and try to portray those two and ironically, you know, when I signed I didn’t train that long and I was on TV and my first two world titles were against both of them so you know, I went up the ladder pretty quickly. So long story short, you know, I didn’t take the deal back in ’96, the problem is when I took the deal in ’98, the money wasn’t there anymore, they gave me a $50,000 guarantee … They told me I’d have to earn it. I told them “I will earn it, don’t worry about that.” I told Vince I would be his top guy in a matter of two years and the rest was history.”
What’s your favorite Kurt Angle match? Sound off in the comments below.
