WWE wrestler and Hall of Famer Kurt Angle is one of the most prolific and decorated superstars of the Attitude Era, he will be remembered as one of the greats of the game. However, many Kurt Angle fans wouldn’t know that the American also has won a gold medal in the Olympics.
Yes, before making a WWE career, Angle was an Olympic athlete. The former WWE Raw General Manager won a gold medal in freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Moreover, before the Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal at the FILA World Wrestling Championship, which was also in Atlanta, Georgia.
Kurt suffered a broken neck in the Trials, although that didn’t make him pull out of the Olympics, he recovered just five months before the tournament.
“It was my lifelong dream and everything I wanted to do. It’s the only thing I wanted to do, and I set my sights on that from when I was a little kid, and to finally accomplish it 20 years later, it was a huge deal for me. It’s everything I wanted in my life. I said in the NBC interview at the Olympics, ‘If I die tonight, I’d be the happiest man in the world.’ I meant that. I really did. I felt like I could rest now because I did everything I wanted to do.” the wrestler spoke on The Kurt Angle Show.
Many WWE fans would want to see the American boy back in the ring in WWE or AEW, but with all the wear and tear his body has went through in the past 30 years, it’s most likely not to happen.
“Well, I had some good doctors [laughs], What happened was I broke my neck at the Olympic trials, and I didn’t know it was broken, so I continued through the trials, and I made the Olympic team, and I went back to my hometown, and I went and got X rays and found out my neck was broken four different vertebrae, and I had two discs that are sticking directly into my spinal cord which could chance paralysis. So the doctor said, ‘You’re done. You can’t wrestle,’ and I said, ‘I have to.'” added the Hall of Famer.
