WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle is one of the biggest names in the history of professional wrestling he was the first Olympic gold medallist to step foot inside a wrestling ring. He earned success pretty early after joining WWE back in 1999 and in only one year time he won the WWE World Championship.
By 2005, Kurt Angle was already a pretty big star. He won multiple World Championships and other prestigious titles in WWE. But he was having other issues in his personal life and it was causing real difficulties in his professional life. It was getting really difficult for others to work with him.
Surviving the Storm: Kurt Angle’s Unbelievable Story of Conquering WWE’s Legendary Public Lesson
At The ECW One Night Stand pay per view event of 2005, WWE decided to punish Angle in front of public. At the end of this show, Angle was beaten by Taz where he locked him in the Taz Mission submission move. Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast, The Kurt Angle Show, he remembered this incident and said;
“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.
Kurt Angle Was Punished At ECW One Night Stand 2005
“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 left WWE in 2006 after Vince McMahon wanted to make him the face of the newly resurrected ECW but Angle did not want it. So he decided to leave WWE and joined TNA Wrestling which was the biggest rival of WWE during the time. In 2016, he got inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
H/T – Inside The Ropes