On the latest “Kurt Angle Show” podcast, Kurt answered some fan questions. Scroll down to listen to the podcast.
Kurt Angle on if he was supposed to be on UFC Ultimate Fighter Season 10:
“Dana White, I approached UFC. This is the second time I approached him. I approached him in 2006 when I left WWE. I signed with TNA and I met with Dana White in 2006. He said, ‘Hey, I’ll sign you right now, but you have to stop wrestling.’ I said, ‘Dana, I just signed with a new company, Impact Wrestling, and I don’t want to let them down. I just signed the contract like a week ago.’ He said, ‘Well, when you’re done with that, you come back to me.'”
“So in 2010, when things weren’t going so great for me in TNA and that whole situation with my ex-wife occurred, I reached out to Dana and he offered me a contract, a six fight deal. He was really cool to me. I mean, this guy treated me like gold. I absolutely love the guy. I have a lot of respect for him. What he did was he decided to give me a six fight deal and he wanted me to be on real fighter with Kimbo Slice. I said, ‘Dana, nobody gets paid on that show to be on it. You’re beating the shit out of each other and no one’s getting paid.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll give you half a million dollars to be on the show.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay. That’s not a bad idea.'”
“So I was gonna do it. I was getting ready to do this and I thought, you know what? I don’t want to leave Dixie Carter yet and I don’t want to let her down because she treated me so well throughout my career. I also thought, you know what? My body is not as in check as it used to be. I was pretty banged up. I broke my neck five times already. I had numbness in my arms and I have weaknesses in my upper body. I can only bench 150 pounds at this particular time and I knew that I wasn’t physically ready to be in the UFC, so I talked myself out of it. I figured all I’m going to do is embarrass myself because I won’t be 100% ready. So I decided to back out of it and I stuck with TNA. That’s the story.”
On his recovery from his recent back surgery:
“I hope my doctors are not listening to this. I got out of the hospital after my surgery and I went and worked out. I was supposed to take six weeks off. I never stopped working out. I worked out the day of my surgery, the day after, the day after that. What I did is I did a lot of stuff sitting so I wouldn’t affect my back because they told me I couldn’t carry more than five pounds. Now I was lifting a lot more than five pounds and I think that I probably didn’t listen to them in that aspect, but I wasn’t literally carrying it while I was walking. I was sitting while I was lifting. So I did leg presses sitting down. I did my bench press sitting down. I did my military press sitting down. Everything I did was sitting down so I took care of my back, but I didn’t want to miss my workouts.”
“Am I stronger than I was back when I was gonna go with UFC? Not much. I do this bench press machine and I only do 60 pounds on each side of it. They’re independent barbells. I only do 60 pounds on each side. So literally, I could probably bench press 180 pounds right now. It’s not a lot. My upper body is still weak. It probably always will be unless I get this fusion surgery on my neck, but I don’t know if I waited too long that my strength in my upper body would never come back. I mean, I lost three inches in both of my arms. I’ve been suffering dearly from this from my career.”
On how he’s feeling now:
“I’m good. Not too bad. I still have pain in my lower back, but I don’t have pain running down my legs anymore. They kicked that, but the pain in my back is still there, and it’s unfortunate, but I couldn’t deal with this. I couldn’t deal with the pain going down my legs. So I’m happy with the surgery.”
“The doctor was able to straighten my legs out and he said it’s not definite it’ll happen, but if you do the things I tell you for rehab, your legs would go straight, and they did, thank God.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit AdFreeShows.com with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
