Kurt Angle, who is an Olympic gold-medallist and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) star, recently spoke about one opponent he wanted to face before retiring. The 53-year-old further explained why the wrestling company saw him as a liability. 

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Angle returned to WWE in 2017 after 11 years away and was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was initially a Raw General Manager but eventually competed. The Olympic medallist retired after his WrestleMania 35 loss to Baron Corbin. 

“It was really tough for me to come to that decision. It actually has been nipping at me for the past year. I’m 50 years old. I know I’m not the same as I used to be. I’m slower in the ring, I can still get the job done, but if I can’t perform at the Kurt Angle of 2006, I don’t want to perform at all,” he had said then. 

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However, Kurt Angle has one regret. In conversation with former WWE star Rene Dupree on his Cafe de Rene podcast, the 53-year-old recalled asking then-chief Vince McMahon for a bout against John Cena to sign off with. 

“Well, when I presented to Vince McMahon that I was going to retire after WrestleMania that year, I told him that I knew I was losing a step and I wasn’t the same as I was before. I didn’t like my performances and, I said to Vince ‘I want to retire after this WrestleMania. I’d like to ask you [Vince] for a favour, I want you to put me with John Cena because I started his career, I’d like him to end my career.’”

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McMahon, who retired from WWE following his hush money scandal, told Angle that he would have to wait one more year to fight Cena. 

“He said ‘Kurt, you have a program going on with Baron Corbin, it’s been going on for 6 months, you have to finish it. If you want to wait until next year I will give you John Cena next year.’ I said ‘Vince I can’t wait until next year, I have to do it this year. He said ‘Then you’re going to have Baron Corbin.’ So I totally understood, Vince was right, I was doing a program with Baron and it was going on for 5 or 6 months, I had to see it through,” Angle recalled. 

“He did give me the option to go another year and wrestle Cena, and I probably should have done that looking back. I probably could have laid back and not wrestled for a good 6 or 7 or 8 months and started to get myself ready. I gained a lot of weight at this particular time, and I could go away from the product, lost the weight and got in better shape and come back and wrestle John Cena.”

Kurt Angle further explained that he thinks WWE still saw him as a liability due to his past addiction issues and injuries. 

“It was unfortunate, and I’m not gonna blame the WWE for my performances, but they brought me back and I told them I wanted to wrestle because I was wrestling really well at that particular time in 2017.”

“They said ‘Well we want to induct you into the Hall of Fame.’ I said ‘Don’t you do that when you retire?’ They said ‘Yeah. But we are going to induct you anyway.’ I said ‘Well let me wrestle after that.’ They said ‘No, you are going to be the GM of Raw.’”