Kurt Angle explains why he would take back a match with Eddie Guerrero if he could.
Angle was asked if he’d change anything or redo any of his past matches on the “Ask Kurt Anything” episode of his podcast this week. Angle said that while he never had a match he would do-over because of the quality, he did have one match with Eddie Guerrero that he would take back just because of the condition he was in at the time.
“Eddie was having problems with his energy, he was really run down, his skin was not tone, it was white and he’d walk backstage [slumped] but when he’d go out to the stage he was Eddie, ya know, like ‘hey it’s showtime.’ But when he was backstage he was having a lot of issues with energy and I think it was his heart just not pumping at the proper pace. One night—it maybe was in Texas, I can’t remember what city—I had a match with him, it was a Lumberjack match and Eddie just broke down and at one point he was so, so, so unhealthy,” Angle said. “I don’t even wanna say tired, just unhealthy. He grabbed the rope and he wouldn’t let it go. I was trying to shoot him off and I’m like ‘Eddie, we gotta go!’ and he’s like ‘no! no! no! no!’ and I’m thinking like, ‘oh my God, he’s cracking.’
“I didn’t know that he had the heart problem, so that’s one match I’d definitely like to take back and it’s just because Eddie was in no condition to wrestle at that time, but nobody knew about his heart problem, I mean, that came out of nowhere the day he passed away. So, it was—thank God the match was taped, it was a SmackDown match and it was pre-taped so we were able to clean it up before it aired on UPN, I believe it was. But it was a night that I regret and I wish I could take back,” Angle explained, “because Eddie was always the greatest in-ring performer, one of the greatest I’ve ever been in the ring with, and that wasn’t Eddie Guerrero that night.”
The Lumberjack match in question aired on the September 7, 2004 episode of SmackDown. The match was the penultimate televised singles match the two would have together before Guerrero passed away the following year.
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