WWE: How One Injury Changed WWE Championship Plans for an Entire Year

WWE's plans are often forced to change whenever a wrestler suffers an injury, and not even the WWE Championship picture has been immune to the problem. Such was the case in the early 2000s with Kurt Angle, who confirmed on his podcast this week that he was initially supposed to hold the WWE title for a full year from 2002-03. He won the gold from Big Show at the 2002 Armageddon event, but due to a broken neck, WWE reversed its WrestleMania XIX plans and had Lesnar beat the Olympic Gold medalist. Angle would eventually get the title back in July 2003 at the Vengeance pay-per-view, then dropped it back to "The Beast" in September after a 60-minute Iron Man Match on an episode of SmackDown. 

"I was supposed to beat Brock, but I broke my neck beforehand," Angle explained (h/t Fightful). "So I had to do the job for Brock and lose to him and give him the title because I had that surgery. So they didn't want me to be Brock two times in a row. So Big Show beat Brock Lesnar, then I beat Big Show. That way, I didn't beat Brock twice, even though he ended up beating me at WrestleMania because I broke my neck."

 "I was supposed to have a title reign for a whole year," he added. "That was the whole plan. I was gonna beat Big Show. I was gonna carry it into WrestleMania, beat Brock, and continue on. Unfortunately, I broke my neck in February and I couldn't, I had to have surgery after WrestleMania."

He later hypothesized how WWE would've structured their WrestleMania match had Angle not been injured. The match saw Lesnar win via a botched Shooting Star Press that nearly broke his own neck. 

"I think that what they were planning on doing at WrestleMania was a double babyface match," Angle said. "They've done that before at WrestleMania. Obviously, during the match, somebody would turn heel like I think Stone Cold Steve Austin, when he wrestled The Rock at WrestleMania [17], they were both babyfaces. I think Stone Cold turned on The Rock and turned heel. So maybe they have the same plan for us. I'd imagine I'd be the one that would turn heel at WrestleMania, obviously, but the plan was — what I know is I was going to continue on as champion for almost a year so unfortunately, that didn't happen because I broke my neck."