Kurt Angle Says Former TNA Rival Will Eventually “Be WWE Champion”

On the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show, the 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist spoke about his match with Bobby Roode at Bound for Glory 2006, which was Roode’s first chance at the TNA World Championship. Although Angle ended up leaving the night with the championship, it was widely expected that the night was supposed to be the coronation of Bobby Roode as TNA’s next big star to close out their biggest pay per view. The WWE Hall of Famer mentioned the misstep by TNA, and revealed another reason why he wanted to drop the title that night to Roode.

“I was expected to drop the title to Bobby,” Angle said. “They were doing all these vignettes with Bobby and his family, how hard of a worker he was, what a great family man he was, and it was all set up to drop the title to him. And I don’t know what happened, it wasn’t me. I’m going to be the first one to admit, I did not ask to keep the title. As a matter of fact, I was severely injured. I had a torn hamstring, not a pulled hamstring, but torn.

“It was almost torn all the way in half, my leg was black all the way down to the heel in my foot. I didn’t even know if I could wrestle at Bound for Glory. They didn’t tell me till the day of the show at Bound for Glory that I was going to retain the title, and I was a little pissed off because I didn’t want to carry the title any longer because of my injury. I wanted to rest up, and heal up, and come back in perfect form. Unfortunately, they decided against Bobby getting the title, which was kind of a downer for the pay per view, especially us being on last. It was a real flat finish.”

After their match, Angle faced James Storm the next night on television and lost the belt in 10 seconds, making a mockery out of the whole situation. Making Angle hold the title for an extra night on the biggest TNA pay per view of the year only to lose it the next in an unplanned title match was one of the biggest mistakes in company history. Angle tried to make sense of…