10 Wrestlers Who Hated Working For ECW

7. Kurt Angle (Original)

Kurt Angle’s first pro wrestling appearance amazingly happened in the hardcore haven that was Extreme Championship Wrestling in October 1996.

Angle had recently won his Gold Medal in the Olympics “with a broken freakin’ neck” when fellow Pittsburgher and ECW performer Shane Douglas lured Kurt to attend the ECW High Incident event in his hometown. Kurt participated in an in-ring interview and even provided commentary for a match. Awkwardly/regrettably though this was the same event where the sorely controversial crucifixion angle took place: Raven with his Nest cronies tied ECW World Champ Sandman to a cross only using barbed wire. This didn’t set well with Kurt at all, who had no inkling or tip-off it would take place. Kurt was severely taken aback by the barbaric symbolism of it all and didn’t want to be associated with it in any way. He quickly hightailed it out the arena, even threatening to sue Paul Heyman if he used any footage of his appearance on television. It’s somewhat a surprise Kurt gave wrestling another chance with the WWF after his detested experience in ECW.

Kurt has spoken of his ECW introduction: “When Raven crucifixed Sandman up on the cross I was like ‘I need to leave. This is not good for me.’ And I talked to Paul Heyman, and Paul said he didn’t know about the crucifix under the ring, which I knew was, you know, I knew he was BS’ing me.”