Kurt Angle had some amazing years in WWE, and when fans are asked who they'd most like to see make a return to the company his name is one of the ones most frequently mentioned. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the promotion has any interest in bringing him back, and it's believed that a large part of that is due to his past struggles with substance abuse issues. It also doesn't help that Kurt openly speaks his mind and set fire to that bridge when he left the company. In an interview with Live Audio Wrestling back in 2007, the Olympic gold medalist was quite candid in his feelings on WWE and members of the roster, and Batista was perhaps the recipient of his most harsh criticism. He proceeded to credit John Cena and several other men on the roster before saying that The Animal was a beneficiary of Vince McMahon's fetish for big, muscular wrestlers and summed up his feelings with this concise statement:
"I think Batista is horrible."
His feelings seemed to have changed come 2012, with Angle telling MMA Uncensored:
I think Bautista is a special talent. I think he's a very tough guy, I think he's going to do very well in MMA. He wasn't an amateur wrestler like most pro wrestlers that cross over usually were amateurs wrestlers like Brock Lesnar or Bobby Lashley. But, Bautista will do really well. He's a tough kid, he's got a great knockout punch. I know that for sure because I was up in WWE and I've seen him have a couple of fights.
Angle has a history of shooting on people and then doing a180, but it looks like he wasn't a fan of Batista in the mid-2000s.
Brad Hamilton is a writer, musician and marketer/social media manager from Atlanta, Georgia. He's an undefeated freestyle rap battle champion, spends too little time being productive and defines himself as the literary version of Brock Lesnar.
