Kurt Angle’s Health: Can He Compete in the Ring?

WWE.com Kurt Angle will wrestle once again.

Tonight on Monday Night Raw, Kurt Angle is set to reveal a major secret that has been teased for the past several weeks. A lot of fans are speculating that this could lead to Kurt Angle’s in-ring return. Is this something that will be possible? Can Kurt Angle actually compete in the ring?

Kurt Angle has wrestled fairly recently, getting in the ring just about a month before he returned to the WWE. On March 3rd, 2017, Angle faced Cody Rhodes during a match for Northeast Wrestling in Connecticut. However, it’s been some time since Angle performed in the ring regularly; he left Total Nonstop Action in March 2016, and over the subsequent year, he typically only performed in one match every few months.

Still, Kurt Angle has said that he thinks he’s healthy enough to perform in the WWE ring again. During an interview on Talk is Jericho in April, Angle said that there is some concern about the severe neck injuries he has had, in addition to his arms not being strong enough, with these being the reasons he did not go to compete with UFC when he had the opportunity. However, he said that he feels he would be able to perform in the WWE.

“I can do the sports entertainment stuff all night long, even now,” he said.

Angle went on to say that when he returned to the WWE in April, he assumed he would have a match at some point, but he and the company’s management did not talk about it. Still, he has gone on record as saying he thinks he’ll find himself in the WWE ring again.

“I really think that Kurt Angle is not done wrestling, and I think it’s safe to say that I will be wrestling back in that WWE ring again,” Angle told ESPN in April.

At this point, it’s just a matter of whether Angle can pass his WWE physical, and it’s not currently known whether he has taken it yet. As of April, he had not yet done so.

“I do have to take the physical, and I’m sure that’s going to come down the road,” Angle said on Talk is Jericho back in April.

For what it’s worth, though, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer said last month that he was pretty sure the Angle storyline was leading towards a match between Angle and Triple H at SummerSlam. While Angle probably won’t return to regular competition, it seems likely that at some point we will see him in the ring for a one-off match, potentially as early as next month.

Sportskeeda recently reported an exclusive that Angle will not wrestle in 2017, and the WWE considers him to be fully inactive. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt, as Sportskeeda’s stories are not always accurate.

When Kurt Angle left the WWE in 2006, it was for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that he no longer felt he could compete as often as Vince McMahon wanted him to.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Angle told WrestleTalk TV in 2015. “Vince McMahon wanted me to continue to go full time, and I couldn’t do the full time anymore. I look at John Cena now, and I don’t know how he’s done it for 11 years. I did it for six and a half.”

Angle has suffered a number of legitimate injuries over the years, most notably a severe neck injury at the 1996 Olympic Trials. Angle continued to experience issues with his neck over the years, in 2003 undergoing a surgery to repair nerve and spinal damage. Even after that surgery, he continued having issues with his neck after that, on numerous occasions needing to be written out of storylines in order to recover.