12 Wrestlers Who DESTROYED Their Bodies For The Business
3. Kurt Angle
Time for a personal story, albeit one from the perspective of somebody looking on from afar who wasn't living it.
This writer was on an independent show with Kurt Angle many moons ago and watched from behind the curtain as the Olympic legend struggled his way up a tight staircase towards the entrance. Then, as if by magic, this clearly-in-pain person bounded through into a packed building and looked every bit like the Angle who'd worked world class matches in his sleep for WWE and TNA for decades.
How? Just...how? Then, once it was over, Kurt returned backstage and could barely walk. Bumps endured during the match brought back echos of his gruelling past, and Angle didn't look like he was having a good time. One can only imagine how he felt after postponing surgery on a broken neck to work with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XIX, and that's just for starters.
Angle had experienced a broken neck long before he became a household name in WWE. He 'won a gold medal with a broken freakin' neck, remember? That feat was one thing, but the agony of a rough pro schedule made Kurt dependent on pain medication to get through. Thankfully, he was finally able to kick that addiction years later, and he's in a better place nowadays.
Kurt sacrificed his body for the Olympic sport he loved though, then gave even more to a business he didn't grow up enjoying but grew to adore. By the end of his career in 2019, the national hero was a contorted mess of pained expressions and arthritic looking body parts.
Fingers crossed he's (relatively) pain free.