There was plenty of rumors swirling about Kurt Angle returning to the WWE for the Royal Rumble and even WrestleMania, fueled in part by Kurt playing coy when talking about it.
In fairness to him, it’s typical when a deal hasn’t been reached or it’s supposed to be a secret.
After the Royal Rumble came and went and he didn’t appear that the event, he said he expected to be involved with the company in some way in the near future, but nothing came of it.
So then rumors of Kurt appearing at WrestleMania started and he took to his podcast, Kurt Angle Show, and cleared the record on all counts.
He went into detail that there were plans for him to be involved in the Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber, but they were changed at the last minute.
Plans change
Plans changing days or even hours before an event aren’t anything new as companies have to deal with injuries, crowd reactions, and merchandise sales, or even the whims of the person or people in charge.
It’s been reported that Kurt was supposed to become involved in RK-Bro and Alpha Academy’s feud and even be the guest referee for their match at Elimination Chamber.
The thought, according to Fightful Select, was (Special thanks to @wrestling_mpw for all transcripts and quotes in this article):
“There were pitches that the academic challenge would even be the “Three Is Challenge,” playing off of Angle’s wrestling days. There were also discussions regarding Angle serving as a special guest referee in Saudi Arabia at the Elimination Chamber event.”
Kurt went into greater detail on his show:
“That’s all true. That’s what it was. There are a lot of rumors going around that I was supposed to be booked for WrestleMania 38, which is not true at all. If you saw the post, a lot of people thought that I was talking about WrestleMania when I was talking about what I was going to do at the Royal Rumble, have the program for a few weeks, and the blowoff would have been Saudi Arabia where I would referee the match between RK-Bro and Alpha Academy.”
He further explained that he currently has no deal in place with the WWE.
“I am not signed with WWE by any means. Didn’t cut a deal. That whole program got canceled at the last second, so it never happened. Unfortunate, but sometimes they have different plans for these guys and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
This would’ve been a pretty cool angle given both Chad Gable and Kurt are former Olympians. If we’re lucky, they’ll bring him back to form a stable with Chad, Otis, and Shelton Benjamin.
For that to happen some deals will have to be made as Kurt’s last appearance in the WWE was in May 2020 when he introduced Riddle on Smackdown after he was released a month earlier as part of the large swatch of budget cut releases that’s defined the WWE.
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