Kurt Angle Claims Triple H Had No Interest In Bringing Him Back To WWE

In a new interview with Justin Barrasso at SI.com, Kurt Angle speaks about his attempt at returning to WWE last fall. He states that when his contract with TNA expired last September, he was planning on re-signing with the WWE so he could close out his career in the promotion where it began and where he gained the most notoriety. He says he didn't want to walk away from TNA unless WWE offered him a more attractive deal, but when it came time to negotiate, he quickly learned that his former boss, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was no longer the man in charge of those decisions and that he would have to go through Triple H.

"Paul is in charge. I found that out when I contacted Vince. I€™ve always had a good relationship with Paul, so I didn€™t consider that a problem. But he decided they had enough talent. For the Vince McMahon who I knew, enough was never enough. He always wanted more. I don€™t know what was going on over there, but they even canceled our meeting. I never went to see them. They didn€™t even sit me down and talk to me."

Angle felt extremely shocked at being slighted in such a manner, stating that it "blew his mind" and he couldn't believe that they had no interest whatsoever. He doesn't know if it was because he's older, but says that if it is, they're obviously not watching what he's been doing in TNA and points out that he and Triple H are the same age. This may come as a surprise to fans who would expect WWE to jump at the chance to bring back a former star with such big name value, but apparently WWE thought differently. While Angle may be 46-years of age, when healthy he's still one of the top workers in the business and is quite capable of having great matches with a wide variety of opponents, not to mention having tremendous charisma. As his contract was coming to a close, speculation was that WWE would rebuff Angle's advances, with some thinking their reasoning would be his struggles with personal demons and stints in rehab, while many believed there was still bad blood over the way he departed the company back in 2006. The rest of the interview consists of Angle talking about his fabled shoot match against Brock Lesnar, as well as his failed attempt at returning to the US Olympic wrestling team which forced him to finally come to grips with the fact that he's no longer the Kurt Angle of his youth. He also talks about the interesting matchups that could have taken place had he returned to WWE, claiming that he and Daniel Bryan would have had "the best match of the year" and feuds with Rusev and Lesnar would have been money. It's an interesting interview and puts and end to the speculation by giving some insight into the much-rumored negotiations between he and his former company.