10 Unthinkable Origins Behind Famous Wrestling Moments
2. Kurt Angle's TNA Debut
In the year of 2006, Kurt Angle evolved from physical wreck to killing machine.
Say you'd given up on WWE at some point in the early 2000s. Say you couldn't sanction the sight of Triple H thinking he was some Harley Race/Ric Flair hybrid, when between 2003 and 2005 he was closer to Rob Conway or Brent Albright as aspirational NWA World Champ. Say you'd had enough of WWE's ugly attempts to chase the Attitude Era dragon, with its canonised rapists and Vince McMahon's tongue swirling around the lips of every Diva in his immediate proximity. Say you'd switched over to Total Non-Stop Action and watched on with fired-up hype at the awesome sight of Kurt Angle busting Samoa Joe's face open with a shoot headbutt, only for the champ to rise up behind him like a badass movie monster with a killer facial better than any prosthetic artist could sculpt.
How did this happen? Were WWE actually that dumb to let him go?
Somehow, given how awesome Angle was in the Impact Zone, he was so thrashed that his legs had turned black from various injuries. After he left Vince McMahon threatening voicemail messages, Vince deemed it better for Angle's own good to let a prized asset leave. Well, not quite; he was a liability to a publicly traded company.
Still: his TNA form was unthinkable given where he was.