A Seismic Signing: The Story Of Kurt Angle Joining TNA In 2006

"He is the former world heavyweight champion, an Olympic gold medallist, and arguably the greatest wrestler in the industry today. Kurt Angle is coming to TNA."

"It’s real. It’s damn real. Hahahah, YEAH!"

As a wrestling fan, it felt anything but real on September 24, 2006. As the TNA No Surrender pay-per-view came to an end, a video package aired. Narrated by TNA’s iconic voice of choice, the late great Barry Scott, it showed a familiar-looking silhouette bouncing around a wrestling ring and proudly holding aloft the United States flag. That face then came to the foreground, put in a mouthguard, and began laughing and hollering in the most insane fashion. Kurt Angle was coming to TNA Wrestling. 

If I didn't have the previous night's show spoilt for me in the form of a text to my Motorola Razr from one of my work colleagues at GAME, I would have guessed that ANYONE but Kurt Angle had signed with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. Seismic was an understatement.

What chain of events 20 years ago today resulted in one of WWE's greatest homegrown Superstars, one who had co-main evented WrestleMania that year no less, landing in the IMPACT Zone? The truth behind it is quite upsetting, and something that would forever change the career - and the life - of one of the very best pro wrestlers of all time.

The Final Months Of Kurt Angle’s First WWE Run

The summer of 2006 was a peculiar time for World Wrestling Entertainment. Shawn Michaels and Triple H had brought their mid-life crisis to television in the form of a D-Generation X reunion, Rey Mysterio was reeling from a World Heavyweight Title reign that saw him belittled and battered by pretty much everybody on SmackDown, while Ric Flair spent his time p*ssing blood like it was the 1980s in a ludicrous feud with Mick Foley, who was simping heavily for mid-card manager Melina because of reasons.  

This cavalcade was the backdrop to WWE's big movement of the season in the rebirth of Extreme Championship Wrestling. Whilst the newly minted WWE ECW featured many ECW originals who were already contracted to WWE, several non-extreme-affiliated names were bumped over to the new third brand to give it more star power. This included The Big Show, who was physically in the exact same state as the Biffa Bin in the alleyway next to the worst nightclub you know, and Kurt Angle, who had spent most of his WWE run pushing through a myriad of injuries and was in dire need of a break, with plans in place for Angle to win the ECW World Heavyweight Title in the latter part of 2006. The move to ECW saw Kurt Angle adopt a new, more ground-and-pound-based wrestling style, cutting a lot of high risk from his repertoire in favour of ramping up the first of his three Is - intensity!  

Throughout his career Kurt Angle had worn his ability to bounce back from career-ending injuries like a badge of honour. The man who proudly announced how he "won a gold medal with a broken freakin’ neck" would take weeks off to recover from injuries and ailments that would take a normal human months - or even years. These quick turnarounds from traction to action, however, were proverbially crowd-funded by a penchant for painkillers. 

Kurt Angle noted to The True Geordie in 2023 that he was introduced to Vicodin after breaking his neck for a second time in 2003. One pill a day became two, then two became four, and before long Angle was spending $7,000 a month to keep himself stocked up with painkillers, which were distributed to him by 12 different doctors and one dodgy dealer in Mexico. By 2006, Kurt Angle was taking a lot of medication to keep himself wrestling, masking pain and keeping that first "I" open.

On August 13, 2006, just over a month before his landscape-changing TNA debut, Kurt Angle's body tapped out. It was during a match against then-ECW World Heavyweight Champion Rob Van Dam at an ECW house show in White Plains, New York, that Angle tore his groin, tore his abdominal muscle off the pelvic bone, and blew out his hamstring all in one match. Kurt did what he always did, though, as he blocked out the pain and delivered the match of the night, before returning to the dressing room, swallowing 20-25 pain pills, and blacking out for the rest of the evening.

WWE Releases Kurt Angle

Kurt Angle revealed in 2021 on The Kurt Angle Show that during these blackouts he would send abusive messages to Vince McMahon - angry and resentful, demanding McMahon call him and speak to him, and threatening to beat him up if he didn’t. These messages would be printed out by McMahon's team and presented to Kurt during a meeting at WWE HQ a few days after his match with Rob Van Dam in White Plains, something that blindsided Kurt and shook him to the core. He had no recollection of sending the messages at all.

According to Kurt, in true McMahon fashion, the meeting got heated when McMahon took off his jacket and offered Angle out for that beating he'd been promising in the texts Kurt had sent whilst wiped out on pain pills. With tears in his eyes, and his body black and blue from the metaphorical train wreck he'd been through in White Plains, Kurt begged McMahon to release him from his WWE contract. McMahon offered an alternative; remain with WWE but take a company-sponsored stay in rehab to kick his dependency to painkillers, and come back better and healthier than ever. Angle refused, and ultimately he got his wish and was let go.

“I come back in and I knew I had to get out of this environment, at least for a little while. I walk back in and I said to Vince, ‘Vince, I can’t do this anymore.’ I was crying. I said, ‘If you don’t release me I think I’m gonna kill myself.’ I didn’t mean that I was going to commit suicide, I meant that I was going to accidentally kill myself. OD on painkillers, wrestle myself to death, I didn’t know. And I had to get out, so Vince looks at me and says, ‘You’re released. Take a break, go to rehab. Come back, we’ll have a contract waiting for you. Just take your time.’ I appreciated it, I was very grateful,” Angle said.

Following this agreement, WWE.com published an article framing Kurt Angle's release as a mutually agreed leave of absence to "heal up mentally and physically" - with the promise of a WWE return when Angle was ready. The article included a quote from Kurt Angle's business manager David Hawk, who said: "Kurt's in a tremendous amount of pain, he's used prescription medication to deal with it. Kurt has come to the conclusion that unless he can get in the ring without the use of pain medication then he doesn't need to be in there. He realizes he was just endangering himself and his opponents."

The article ended with a sign-off from Kurt Angle: "Don't be concerned, this move was for the best. It was a privilege to be able to compete for all of you. I'd like to say thank you."

At the time, this sounded like Kurt Angle was quietly retiring. An iconic, hall of fame-worthy career had seemingly ended not with a bang, but a White Plains whimper. That was until Jeff Jarrett and Dixie Carter entered the fray!

Jeff Jarrett And Dixie Carter Reach Out

Jarrett and Dixie Carter had overseen some big wins for TNA Wrestling in recent years, from the signings of top stars like Christian Cage and Sting, to TNA IMPACT launching on Spike TV, with it being announced in the final minutes of No Surrender that IMPACT would be moving to primetime on the network. The promotion was backed by the Carter family via Panda Energy, who saved TNA from going out of business when they bought a controlling share in the promotion in October 2002. 

At a TNA taping in Orlando, Florida, Jarrett was told by David Hawk that Kurt Angle was going to be available and one of the best wrestlers in the world at the time was open to joining TNA. Jarrett knew Ange being “gung ho” didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to join TNA, though, having been burnt on multiple occasions by Hulk Hogan effectively using TNA for leverage to earn a few extra zeros on Honest Terry’s WWE deals. 

As a result, Jarrett wanted Kurt Angle tied down for five years, believing that TNA would actually be worse off if Angle ended up jumping back to World Wrestling Entertainment after a couple of years of Total Nonstop Action. To secure such a big deal, though, Jarrett had to make a call to Bob Carter.

Speaking to Carter from the lake by his home in early September 2006, Jarrett sold the TNA owner on Kurt Angle, describing Angle as the true personification of a Total Nontstop Action wrestler and the best wrestler in the world at the time. As a result, Bob Carter approved the deal. 

TNA’s negotiations with Kurt Angle proved to be remarkably simple. Following a call from Dixie Carter and then Jeff Jarrett, Kurt Angle told them what it would cost to sign him. 

“They told me to write down a figure and they would reach out to me the next day and we’ll see if we can make it work. It was relatively easy, painless, quickest deal I ever did. I wrote down my figure and the next day they said, ‘Okay, we’ll fly up and sign you.’ No negotiations, it was just one-time thing, and I got what I wanted and I was very happy,” Angle noted on his podcast.

Both Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Angle got what they wanted. The Wrestling Machine signed a deal worth seven figures per year, making him the highest-paid wrestler in the promotion, while Jarrett got Angle to put pen to paper on a five-year contract.

It wasn’t just the money that resulted in Angle signing with TNA Wrestling. To pardon the pun, it was the IMPACT he could make in TNA, and Angle was very much a game-changer for the company.

Angle said in 2021:

"The reason I signed with TNA, and there's nothing wrong with this, but when you're in WWE, it's a huge company. It's bigger than you. There's nothing you can do. You can have the greatest career of all time, you're not going to make a bigger impression on the company itself. TNA, it's a smaller company and you're the bigger name in the company. You're carrying the company on your back and making it into a WWE. You have a purpose that way. When you're in WWE, you're never bigger than the product. When you're in TNA, you are bigger than the product and what's carrying that product to another level. There's a bigger purpose in it.

"It was about me proving myself that I could be a formidable player and make a company grow bigger than it was. I think I did a good job of that, it wasn't just me. There were a lot of other wrestlers in that company but I wanted to show that I had a purpose in my life and that purpose was TNA. And I could make this company grow that never became as big as WWE, but there were times where the ratings started getting fairly close. We were doing two million viewers a week, 2.1 million viewers a week, which was a big deal for TNA at the time. It made me feel very good as a representative of the company that I was one of the main reasons for it."

Kurt Angle’s TNA Run

This all led to September 24, 2006, and the unreal sight of Kurt Angle maniacally laughing down the lens of the camera as the TNA Impact Zone shaked.  

The Kurt Angle TNA story, like a floating Biro, wrote itself: He had a truly memorable run as part of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, spending more time in that company than any other. It would see some of Angle's greatest in-ring moments, but would also inspire a less-than-desirable nickname based on a very real addiction to pain pills.

These are, of course, cautionary tales told elsewhere, but 20 years ago on this very day, for many wrestling fans like myself, none of that mattered... because Kurt Bloody Angle had Crossed The Line!

Reflecting upon his TNA stint on the 20-year anniversary of his debut with OutKick Dropkick, Angle believes he had a better run in TNA than he did in WWE: 

"To be honest with you, I had an incredible career in both WWE and TNA and I believe that I had a better career in TNA and, unfortunately, a lot of those WWE fans didn't get to see it and I think that they would have seen my career… Now we have a lot of great TNA fans all over the world but here in the United States, it’s a far second place to, before AEW came around, but it was a far second place to WWE. But I would have loved for the WWE fans to see me wrestle in TNA."

When he exited TNA in March 2016, Angle finished up as a six-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion, one-time X-Division Champion, and two-time TNA World Tag Team Champion with Sting and AJ Styles. He was inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame in 2013 and, to this day, Angle is fondly remembered as one of TNA’s best-ever wrestlers.