WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle made for an entertaining General Manager of RAW following his WWE return, but when he was finally given the chance to step back into the ring, the results were disappointing. The Olympic Gold Medallist clearly couldn't do what he once did, and his final ever match coming against King Corbin at WrestleMania was majorly underwhelming.
Now, Angle has acknowledged that, admitting that his final run didn't go as he hoped.
"It didn’t go the way I wanted it to," he admits in the video below. "Vince McMahon had an idea for me, I think he was looking at me as a liability, someone that was addicted to painkillers, someone that broke his neck 5 times. So, I think Vince didn’t have the same idea I did. I wanted to get a title run when I came back. I actually took a year off after I left TNA and I wrestled around the world. I did events in the U.K, Europe, Asia, Mexico, Arizona; I did a pay-per-view down there with Rey Mysterio. I wanted to have another title run and retire."
"And Vince McMahon wanted me inducted into the Hall of Fame and I told him, ‘Well, I am not done wrestling’ and he said, ‘That’s okay’ And I said, ‘Well, you know eventually I would like to wrestle,’ and he said ‘We’ll get there.’ So, after the Hall of Fame, that night, after I had my speech, Vince McMahon came up to me and said, ‘You’re going to be the GM of Raw starting tomorrow.’ And I was like ‘Well, I still wanna wrestle,’ he said, ‘We’ll get you there.’ So, I think he did everything he could to kind of push that off," Angle revealed. "And when it was time for me to wrestle, I was doing the GM job for a year and a half; I was inactive, not bumping, not wrestling."
"My body started getting arthritic, my neck tightened up, my back, my knees. Before I knew it, I got in the ring and I looked like an old man wrestling. And I knew that. Even though the company wanted me to continue to wrestle, I didn’t feel right about it for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to come back and have the title run, that wasn’t going to happen."
WWE made a major mistake not trusting Angle, and his career sadly ended with a whimper rather than a bang. It's understandable that Vince McMahon had his reservations, of course, but Angle had already proven himself by that point, so it was an undeniably bad business decision on the WWE Chairman's part.
Check out the full interview below: