During a recent episode of his podcast, The Kurt Angle Show, the WWE Hall of Famer reflected on his initial deal with TNA Wrestling when he signed with them in 2006 after departing from WWE.
“Well, TNA has an incredible contract, they gave me a lot of money. I had a lot, a lot less dates and WWE. I mean, I only had like 52 dates that I needed to oblige. So obliged with the company. So what they did is they started sending me out, marketing me to other companies, so they can make a little bit of their money back. I didn’t get paid for these shows, unfortunately, but I understood why they did it,” Kurt said. “After a while, I told them, ‘Listen, that’s enough,’ because they start sending and over there five times a year. It was ridiculous and I was getting 50 grand a pop in Japan, and I wasn’t seeing any of the money. So it didn’t seem right to me after a while. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m doing way too much. You guys need to back off just let me do my TNA schedule.’ That’s what we did eventually.”
Angle talked about never signing with ROH, which came down to him feeling obliged with his TNA deal.
“No, I’m surprised. But I wasn’t really interested in doing anything outside of TNA. I did what I had to do because the company wanted me to. If they would have asked me to go to Ring of Honor — which I think Ring of Honor, at that particular time, was a competitor, so they didn’t want me to go over there and compete against myself. So I think that’s the reason why I never did anything with Ring of Honor. But don’t get me wrong. I would’ve loved to.”
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