Kurt Angle’s hour-long Iron Man Match with Brock Lesnar on the Sept. 18, 2003 episode of SmackDown is still regarded as one of the greatest pro wrestling matches of all time. However, the match took place at a time when Angle was dealing with serious substance abuse issues. The Olympic Gold Medalist and WWE Hall of Famer reflected on abusing painkillers on The Joe Rogan Experience this week and admitted he took twenty pills after learning his sister Le’Anne had died of a heroin overdose.
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“This is how bad it got. There was one point where my brother called me, I was at a house show for WWE, it was the night before I was going to have the biggest match of my career with Brock Lesnar. It was an Iron Man Match on SmackDown. My brother calls me and says hey your sister died of a heroin overdose. It crushed me. I was crying, I was in such pain thinking about my sister, who was only 40 years old, dying of a heroin overdose. And the thing is, I wasn’t able to talk to her because I told her eight months prior if she doesn’t get clean I’m not going to talk to you. So I didn’t talk to her for eight months and then this happens,” Angle said.
Angle said he then decided to abuse his prescription and didn’t wake up until 5 p.m. the next day. He still chose to take part in the match, in which he dropped the WWE Championship to “The Beast,” mostly because he knew his sister would have wanted him to and he wouldn’t have to think about losing her for that hour. Angle would eventually enter rehab in 2013 and has been clean and sober ever since.
Kurt Angle on Vince McMahon Claiming He’ll Live to Be 120
Angle talked elsewhere in the interview about Vince McMahon and how the executive chairman once claimed to Angle he’d live to be 120 and wouldn’t stop working in WWE until his passing.
“You know what he told me when I came back to WWE [in 2017]? He said, ‘I’m going to have this company for a lot longer than you think, Mr. Angle. I’m 73 right now. My mom lived to be 101. I plan on living until I’m 120. I’m never letting the company go. I’m always going to work here. They’re going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands,’” Angle recalled. “That’s what keeps him going. That’s why I’m a little, not nervous, but what’s he going to do now? His life is wrestling.”
