Kurt Angle had many opportunities to step inside the Octagon.
Each time there was a reason he ultimately decided not to.
In a new interview with Marc Raimondi of ESPN, the Olympic gold medalist and WWE / IMPACT Wrestling Hall of Fame legend explained why he turned down each offer.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On getting a $15,000 per fight offer from UFC before Dana White and Zuffa took over from SEG: “I love fighting, but I don’t love it that much to get my butt kicked for 15 grand [per fight]. So, I decided to go to WWE and when I got there, I had so much success early on. And then UFC started becoming mainstream in the early 2000s, and this is when I was having a stellar career in WWE, winning world championships, beating The Rock for the world championship, beating ‘Stone Cold’ [Steve Austin] for the world championship. And I thought, ‘Man, I would love to fight, but I already had this great career going on right now.'”
On turning down another offer from Dana White when working in TNA IMPACT Wrestling: “Dana White would not let me wrestle and fight at the same time. And I didn’t want to go back to TNA and say, ‘Listen, that contract I just signed is null and void.’”
On turning down a final offer from Dana and the UFC when he was 41 years old: “I started training for it a little bit and I realized, ‘I’m past my prime, I can’t do this.’ So, I had to turn it down. But I’m very grateful for the offers Dana White gave me. He is an incredible person.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below, or at ESPN.com.
