Kurt Angle Never Regretted The Move To TNA Wrestling, Despite The Smaller Audiences

Kurt Angle says it didn’t matter to him that TNA Wrestling did not have large audiences when he joined the promotion in 2006, he still never regretted the move.

When Kurt Angle left WWE to join TNA Wrestling after just four weeks of what was supposed to be a hiatus that would allow Kurt Angle to recharge his batteries, the wrestling world buzzed with excitement about the potential of Kurt Angle having matches against names like Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Sting, and others.

Even though Kurt Angle had just been moved to the ECW brand during his final few months in WWE, the move to TNA was still seen as a move to a much smaller promotion at the time although it was one of the first moves that allowed TNA to grow their company to where they were able to be positioned in a weekly primetime slot on Thursday nights.

Speaking on a recent Q&A session of his podcast, Kurt Angle would say that he never questioned his move to TNA Wrestling from 2006. He does, however, admit that it was an adjustment for him to wrestle for such smaller audiences in the IMPACT Zone in Orlando, Florida.

“Well, it was an adjustment, you know, wrestling in front of a smaller crowd. It was a bit tough. You are spoiled when you are in WWE, you have sold out shows everywhere. TNA was a much smaller company, but it was a great smaller company. They did great ratings on Spike TV. We were doing 2 million viewers a week, we had a good little run. So, I don’t regret my decision, but it was difficult at the beginning to adjust to it.”

These days, what was TNA Wrestling is now IMPACT Wrestling. Kurt Angle recently admitted in an interview with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, that he had turned down an offer to make a return to IMPACT Wrestling. Learn more here.

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