Kurt Angle Details Multiple Offers He Got From UFC

In an interview with ESPN, Kurt Angle spoke about the three offers he got to work with UFC during his career, including as a fighter. He almost accepted a fight at one point. Here are highlights:

On one offer coming right after he signed with TNA: “Dana White would not let me wrestle and fight at the same time. And I didn’t want to go back to TNA and say, ‘Listen, that contract I just signed is null and void.'”

On being offered $150,000 for fifteen fights in 1996: “I love fighting, but I don’t love it that much to get my butt kicked for 15 grand [per fight]. So, I decided to go to WWE and when I got there, I had so much success early on. And then UFC started becoming mainstream in the early 2000s, and this is when I was having a stellar career in WWE, winning world championships, beating The Rock for the world championship, beating ‘Stone Cold’ [Steve Austin] for the world championship. And I thought, ‘Man, I would love to fight, but I already had this great career going on right now.'”

On being offered $500,000 for The Ultimate Fighter in 2009: “I started training for it a little bit and I realized, ‘I’m past my prime, I can’t do this’. So, I had to turn it down. But I’m very grateful for the offers Dana White gave me. He is an incredible person.”

On if he regrets choosing pro wrestling over UFC: “Every once in a while, it gets to me. And when I watch these fights, I’m like, ‘Gosh, man, I think I would’ve done pretty well in this. Seeing Brock Lesnar, my friend, be UFC champion and seeing Randy Couture, who I trained with for the Olympics, being UFC champion. It makes you question, did you do the right thing? But I look back and I say, ‘You know what? I had a pretty stellar career in pro wrestling.’ So, I can’t regret that.”