Kurt Angle Discusses Scrapped Plans To Tag With His Brother In WWE
On a recent episode of The Kurt Angle Show Podcast, the Olympic Gold Medalist spoke about his brother, Eric Angle, who spent three years in WWE, making sporadic appearances to help him while he was a heel.
Eric left the WWE in 2003 after debuting in 2000 at Survivor Series. Eric helped Kurt defeat The Undertaker by switching places to defeat The Undertaker. Kurt spoke about his brother and why he had to leave WWE after just a short time with the company.
"My brother was getting it, he just wasn't getting it as quickly as I did," Angle said. "I think the company was comparing him to me, but he was getting it, he was learning, he was improving dramatically. The unfortunate incident of him tearing his tricep, tore the tendon right off the bone from his arm and he had to have surgery. When he had the surgery, the doctor performed surgery the next day and my brother was in excruciating pain. He went back to the hospital and said 'There's something going on in my arm, I need to take this cast off'. [The doctor] said 'Don't worry, it's just from the surgery, the pain will go away,' so the next day [my brother] went back to the hospital and said the same thing. They told him to go home, don't worry about it, go rest. The third day, [my brother] didn't have a saw, and he wanted to saw off the cast himself so he went to the Home Depot and sawed off the cast.
"What he did, he looked at the incision and there was a huge infection. He pushed on the incision and all this yellow and red puss came out. He went directly to the hospital after the Home Depot and he said 'Look, I told you there was an infection.' The hospital to protect their ass and for liability said in the report that my brother sawed off his cast and got the infection by sawing off his cast. You don't get an infection in 10 minutes, he was at the Home Depot 10 minutes prior to when he went to the hospital and they did that to cover their ass and it ended my brother's career. He couldn't sue the doctor or the hospital, WWE let him go and thank god they paid for his surgery before they let him go which was pretty cool."
Eric's last appearance on WWE television was to be involved in the Kurt and Brock Lesnar build to WrestleMania XIX where he again switched places with his brother to help him get the upper hand on his opponent. Kurt spoke about how they were supposed to be a team at some point, but unfortunately his brother got injured and it never happened.
"That was the plan," Angle said. "They wanted Eric and I too tag together, they thought if Eric improved enough he'd be a great tag team partner for me, we could have a good run as a tag team for a while. Unfortunately he got hurt and it never transpired."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Kurt Angle Show Podcast with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.