During an appearance on Live Audio Wrestling last night, Kurt Angle revealed why he chose to leave TNA Wrestling and gave some advice to the company. Here are some highlights thanks to John Pollock:
On The Decision to leave TNA: I did this on purpose. I needed a break. I’ve been under contract for the past 17 years and didn’t have much time to spend with my family. I just wanted to do my own thing for a year. I finished up my contract with TNA, I was really happy with my career there, very happy with my career in WWE. I really don’t have much else to prove, I’m not going to be retiring though. I will be coming back to wrestling eventually. I’ve been signing contracts mainly because of the money. Thank god, the money has always been good for me. WWE and TNA, they’ve both treated really well but I just got to the point where I wanted to do my own thing for a little while. I didn’t want to be obligated to going anywhere, I wanted to do my own thing and see how that goes, see where it takes me. I also wanted to start working on my acting career, I signed with an agency, APA in Hollywood. I’ve been doing some reads, just doing my own thing. I like it, it’s good to be off and not have to worry about showing up somewhere every week.
On His Advice to TNA: They’ve always been looking for former WWE talent, former WCW talent, any big name of the past. In the last couple of years, they’ve been learning that the only way to make that company work is to create their own talent and they’ve been able to do that. You look at someone like Eric Young or EC3, they’re guys that they actually build up themselves and it wasn’t happening for years. The talent they were creating, there were a few great ones like Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, but then it got stagnant. There wasn’t much talent being created in TNA, they were always just looking for the next star that left another company. I was one of them, Sting was one of them. We were the faces of that company for years. It’s hard, you go from Spike to Destination America to Pop TV, three networks in a little under a year and a half. It’s tough on the wrestlers, it’s tough on the company. They just have to find their sync, hopefully Pop TV will continue to do what their doing with promoting TNA but it’s going to take a while. I’m confident they can do it, it’s going to come down to John Gaburick who’s in charge of talent relations, he’s doing a pretty good job. He was a producer in WWE. He’s doing a good job, you’re seeing talents starting to come through. The Miracle is doing a good job, EC3, Drew Galloway, Bram. You’re seeing talent that was formerly from WWE, their training ground NXT, you can legitimately say that TNA has created them because they never really made it on the main roster of WWE. Now they’re big names in TNA and that’s what TNA has to continue to do.
On a Possible WWE Return: We’ll see what happens. I haven’t talked to TNA or WWE about doing anything in the future. I want to take this whole year off but I will start talking negotiations in the fall. We’ll see what happens but yes, it does feel good. I heard about Pittsburgh, I didn’t really watch but I heard they were chanting we want Angle. I saw a lot of tweets going out there, I do believe I started trending that night. I’m sure that was quite a surprise to WWE. I know that the fans wants me back, I understand. I had a great career there, it’s where I started and obviously a lot of people want me to finish there.
