Kurt Angle says Brock Lesnar was willing to go to TNA, but they couldn’t afford him.
In the early 2000s, Angle and Lesnar were two of WWE’s top stars. They memorably clashed at WrestleMania 19, where Lesnar beat Angle to win the WWE Championship. Lesnar left WWE in 2004, while Angle’s time with he company came to an end in 2006. Angle then signed with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) and quickly rose to the top of the company. He also beat Lesnar to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at an event for the Inoki Genome Federation in 2007.
Speaking on his podcast, The Kurt Angle Show, Angle recalled how Lesnar once called him about potentially coming to TNA in 2007. He described how Lesnar was willing to come to the company if the money was right. However, Angle stated that the company told him that they couldn’t give Lesnar the kind of money he was looking for.
“Brock calls me. He’s not in the WWE. He says, ‘Listen, man, can you get me in TNA?’ I probably shouldn’t even be saying this stuff, but Brock doesn’t care,” Angle said. “So he said, ‘Hey, what are you making?’ I told him what I was making. He said, ‘If you can get me that, I’ll come.’ I approached TNA, and they said they couldn’t give him that kind of money. So it was amazing because I think at TNA at the time, I think they were at the top of their budget. They couldn’t really give any more money out.
“I was making a lot of money, Sting was making a good bit of money, and then you had a bunch of guys on the roster. TNA, the Carter family funded it for a long time, and then TNA started making their own money, but it just wasn’t enough to bring in another fit for seven figures a year. I just don’t think they were capable enough to do that.”
Lesnar ultimately returned to WWE in 2012, while Angle stayed with TNA until 2016. He then returned to WWE in 2017, and he retired following his loss to Baron Corin at WrestleMania 35 in 2019.
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