After WWE put on the show of the year with ECW One Night Stand in 2005, it brought the idea of an ECW revival to the forefront of the wrestling fans. This came to fruition one year later, with ECW becoming it’s own WWE show with stars like Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle as ECW’s star men.
Kurt Angle was a former WWE champion who was in the prime of his wrestling career. He was regularly putting on amazing matches, against stars like Shawn Michaels, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit to name a few. He was a huge coup for ECW and could be the man to lead the brand to incredible popularity.
However, that did not pan out for Kurt Angle in ECW. The former WWE Champion was struggling with drug addiction at the time, and was struggling in his every day life. He even claimed that he would send Vince McMahon a barrage of texts late at night, threatening to fight him, but then have no memory of the situation come morning.
He even claimed to have told Vince McMahon that if he didn’t release him from his WWE deal, he would likely end up dead. This prompted Vince to release him from WWE, and ECW, to help him get sober and deal with his real life troubles before he returned to the run.
However, Kurt Angle’s ECW exit was not what the Olympic Gold Medallist thinks was the reason that ECW failed under the WWE banner.
Kurt Angle on ECW
Kurt Angle’s ECW run may have been a short one, but he believes it was not the only reason for the brand’s demise. Angle revealed on an episode of The Kurt Angle Show that he believes the reason for ECW’s failure was due to WWE trying to make ECW more like WWE, rather than respecting their roots of extreme violence in the 1990s.
He also believes that fans would not accept any wrestlers other than the original stars from the 1990s, which was proved not to be true as CM Punk became a star on the brand despite never wrestling for Paul Heyman’s promotion.
“The WWE tried to make it into something that it wasn’t because they couldn’t do certain things. They couldn’t do the risky stuff. WWE is a family oriented show. They’re a publicly traded company. They can’t do the most extreme stuff and the adult content that ECW was providing in the ‘90s, so they weren’t able to be the original ECW. If you’re not the original ECW, there’s no way you’re going to work out. That’s my opinion.”
Kurt Angle ECW plans
In the same podcast (The Kurt Angle Show), Kurt Angle also commented on what the plan was for him, if he stayed in WWE and ECW. Kurt Angle’s ECW run would have ended in him winning the ECW Championship by the end of the year, likely at December to Dismember PPV inside the “Extreme Elimination Chamber”. However, he left in August and soon signed for TNA, ending his ECW run before it really got going.
“I know the plan was to get me the ECW World Title by the end of the year. Of course, that never happened because I quit by August. I never got to see it come to fruition.” Kurt Angle said.
Quotes from WrestlingNews.co
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