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Update On Kurt Angle Returning To WWE: Is Vince McMahon Still Negative On The Idea Of Bringing Angle Back?

By Aaron Sass
Published on: 17:40 PST, Oct 23, 2016

Now that Bill Goldberg has officially returned to WWE, there are only a few legends who haven’t returned to the company after leaving on pretty bad terms, and Kurt Angle is arguably the biggest name of all of them.

Angle has spent the last decade wrestling for WWE’s chief competitor TNA/Impact Wrestling, but his contract with them expired earlier this year, and he decided to not re-sign. Since then, he’s wrestled on a select number of independent shows, most notably against Cody Rhodes over the summer, and it’s pretty clear that his pro wrestling career won’t last much longer.

In recent years, Angle has attempted to reconnect with WWE chairman Vince McMahon, but to no avail. Since Angle left the company in August of 2006, Vince hasn’t been interested in bringing him back, mainly because of his well-known addiction problems, which only got worse when he signed with TNA shortly after leaving WWE.

Even though Paul Levesque, better known as Triple H, has say in who WWE brings in, the decision to bring Angle back to WWE still remains in the hands of Vince McMahon, according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Vince McMahon has decided to bring back legends who have had well-known addiction issues, but he’s only brought them back after they’d proven that they could get, and stay clean. Legends such as Road Dogg, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and Scott “Razor Ramon” Hall were all ignored by WWE for several years because they weren’t able to get their lives together, but, as soon as they did, they were brought back, and two of the three aforementioned legends were put in the WWE Hall of Fame upon their return.

Angle claims that he’s been sober for the better part of the last three years, which is quite the turnaround, because at one point, he was taking 65 extra-strength Vicodin a day, on top of taking Xanax, and drinking alcohol. He told the story of his addiction, and how he got clean on the Dan Le Batard show last month.

“I’d say when I was taking 65 extra strength Vicodin a day. I was on a lot, and there was no way I could get out of it. The only thing I could do is eventually go to rehab and try to fix my life again, but I actually beat it on my own.”

“Because I broke my neck a few times I got put on Xanax, because I was always getting nervous, so they put me on that. And when I went to TNA, everybody drank alcohol down there, so I started drinking with my meds, and then I would manipulate my meds… I would save them to the evening and then take them while drinking alcohol, which got me in a lot of trouble; four DUIs in five years.”

Since leaving TNA, Kurt Angle has said that he’s spoken to Triple H about coming back, and that, from his conversation with him, it seems like WWE has an interest in bringing him back. But, he said that he won’t be coming back until sometime next year.

There’s a rumor going around that 2K is interested in making Kurt Angle the pre-order bonus for next year’s WWE video game. In previous years, they’ve made Sting, The Ultimate Warrior, and, of course, Goldberg the pre-order bonus for the annual game, which led to all three men returning to WWE. So if they do make Angle next year’s bonus, he’ll likely follow in the footsteps of the three aforementioned professional wrestling legends.

As previously mentioned, the decision to bring Angle back to WWE is in the hands of Vince McMahon, who has been negative about bringing our “Olympic Hero” back in the past. But, Angle’s conversation with Triple H indicates that the WWE chairman is at least warming up to the idea.

[Featured Image by WWE]

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