8 Wrestlers Who Turned Down Big Money WWE Deals

It's hard to believe that Kurt Angle, a man so committed to wrestling that he postponed crucial neck surgery to put over Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XIX, once turned his nose up at the industry, believing it to be a waste of his talents.

To be fair, you can sort of see where he was coming from. In 1996, Angle had just won an Olympic gold medal for the United States in amateur wrestling. He was both a world-class athlete and a national hero, for whom offers were never likely to be in short supply.

As such, he was said to have rejected a bumper contract offer from Vince McMahon after a brief appearance in Paul Heyman's ECW that same year. Negotiations hit a snag when the chairman informed him that he couldn't promise he would win every match (a privilege reserved only for John Cena).

Two years later, however, the then 30-year-old had a change of heart. He decided that he was not only prepared to take up pretend-fighting, but even to lose the occasional match - and remained happily wedded to WWE for eight years.