Kurt Angle reveals how his agent cost him a multi-million dollar contract with WWE
Kurt Angle's rise to the top in WWE came faster than almost every superstar to ever walk into the company. Despite having no professional wrestling experience, the Olympic Gold Medalist picked up wrestling better than anyone in the business and became a multi-time World Champion.
While Kurt Angle is a bonafide Olympic Gold Medalist, he's become better known for his pro wrestling career that lasted two decades. However, what many people don't know is that soon after winning the Olympic Gold Medal in 1996, Kurt Angle would get an offer from WWE.
Speaking to PWInsider, Kurt Angle revealed how his agent cost him a multi-million dollar contract with WWE in 1996:
Well I wanted to sign, my agent wouldn't let me. My agent was an NFL agent, his name is Ralph Cindrich and he repped a lot of the really big NFL athletes, so he was like, "You're not doing this crap. FOX wants you to do a sportscasting job for FOX Pittsburgh, let's get you that instead." I wanted to sign a WWE deal because it was, you know, it was a really nice deal. For me, I never had money, you know, they're giving me this multi-million dollar deal for 10 years and I thought it was a great opportunity but my agent said "No it's crap - you're real, they're fake, don't sign it," and I sat on it, and after a couple of years I turned on RAW and I was glued to the TV. I loved the entertainment, the wrestling, the athleticism, you know, Stone Cold, Rock, Triple H, Undertaker, all those guys were doing their thing and I really, really enjoyed watching The Rock and Steve Austin and I decided I'm going to go in there and try to portray those two and ironically, you know, when I signed I didn't train that long and I was on TV and my first two world titles were against both of them so you know, I went up the ladder pretty quickly. So long story short, you know, I didn't take the deal back in '96, the problem is when I took the deal in '98, the money wasn't there anymore, they gave me a $50,000 guarantee.
This was a major miscalculation by Kurt Angle's agent. However, one can only wonder how he would have fared in WWE when 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin still wasn't at his peak.
It's safe to say that Kurt Angle signing two years earlier would have changed the course of WWE history. With that said, it's unfortunate that his agent had cost him millions of dollars.
We can only assume that he made the money back in his time with WWE as he was shot up to the main event scene faster than most people.
Kurt Angle's WWE success
While Kurt Angle may have signed a deal worth 10 times less than the previous offer, he may have made it up with his success in the ring. Kurt Angle won multiple World titles and took just a year to win his first one.
Over the years, Kurt Angle has seen tremendous World Championship success in both WWE and Impact Wrestling. He officially retired from in-ring competition in 2019 after losing to Baron (King) Corbin at WrestleMania 35.
We doubt that Kurt Angle looks back with too much regret, as the timing eventually worked out for him.