Kurt Angle may be the ultimate wrestler, with Olympic gold and plenty of time spent in WWE.
But that doesn't mean it's been an easy path for the wrestler.
He's battled more than his fair share of tragedy in his time.
Here's the tragic real-life story of Kurt Angle.
Losing his father
Everything Kurt Angle has accomplished in his life, he's had to do without his father,
who passed away decades ago thanks to a fatal freak accident.
David Angle was a crane operator who attended all of Kurt's wrestling matches and football
games.
In 1985, when Kurt was 16, his father fell out of a 15-foot-high crane and landed on
his head.
Even with his skull cracked, David Angle walked himself to the hospital, but he slipped into
a coma, and died two days later.
Kurt responded to this catastrophic loss by doing what he did best: excelling at athletics.
He had an amazing football performance the same week his father passed.
That said, his father's death might've been why young Kurt eventually became the man he
did.
As he said in his autobiography,
"I grew up and overcame my fears the day [my father] died.
I vowed right then and there to become a champion, to do whatever it took.”
The murder of Dave Schultz
David Schultz, who won Olympic gold in 1984, helped Angle train for the ‘96 games, but
never got to see his protege triumph.
Schultz and Angle were members of Team Foxcatcher, a wrestling squad financed by wealthy philanthropist
John du Pont.
Sadly, du Pont had serious mental issues that, according to court testimony, got worse as
his team prepped for the Olympics.
He threatened multiple wrestlers, including pulling a gun on one while kicking him off
the team.
On January 26, 1997 Du Pont shot David Schultz three times.
For that crime, du Pont was sentenced to prison, and died behind bars in 2010.
A devastated Angle wound up being the only member of Team Foxcatcher in the Olympics,
and he dedicated himself to honoring his trainer's memory as best he could.
Breaking his neck
“In case you didn’t know, I won a gold medal with a broken freakin’ neck.”
Throughout his pro wrestling career, Kurt Angle has constantly bragged about winning
his gold medal "with a broken freakin' neck."
He's said it enough that it’s become a well-worn catchphrase, so it's easy to forget just how
serious the incident really was, and how it helped to start him down a long path of injury
and addiction.
“Uh, three months before the Olympics, and this is right before the Olympic tryouts,
I broke my neck at the US Open.”
Angle landed hard on his head during Olympic trials, herniating two discs, cracking two
vertebrae, and pulling four neck muscles.
And yet, despite suffering injuries that absolutely should've knocked him out of contention for
the games, he soldiered on.
When he went in for his MRI the next day, his doctor ordered him to rest and heal for
at least six months.
That would’ve taken him out of the Olympics, so Angle found a doctor who was, in his words,
"either smart enough or stupid enough to allow [him] to wrestle."
Angle rode this new doctor’s plan all the way to Olympic gold, but unfortunately, he
also developed a long-time need for more.
Drug addiction and DUIs
Kurt Angle is far from the only wrestler to battle drug addiction, but his fight has been
particularly difficult.
In addition to the Olympics, Angle has suffered many injuries as a pro wrestler, which led
him to develop an addiction to painkillers of all sorts.
According to interviews, he even had a system where he'd go from doctor to doctor, as many
as ten at a time, to get various prescriptions.
By 2006, he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review he was still clean, but unfortunately, that
didn’t last.
During a 2014 CBS interview, Angle admitted to a seven-year battle with a potentially
lethal cocktail of morphine, Xanax, and alcohol that he had only kicked about a year before.
Along the way, those drugs helped him rack up four DUI arrests: one in August 2013, when
Angle was arrested in Texas for reckless driving.
It was one too many arrests for the Olympian.
Shortly after, he announced on Twitter that he was going to rehab, saying,
"In light of recent events I will immediately be entering a rehabilitation center.
I realize that this is a pivotal time in my life and I ask for your understanding as well
as your prayers and continued support."
Le’Anne’s tragic overdose
By 2003, Kurt Angle had already experienced more than enough tragedy to go with his triumphs,
but more heartbreaking news was on the way.
Kurt's sister, Le'Anne, lost her life to a heroin addiction.
Her devastated brother didn't talk about it publicly for a long time, until a 2014 YouTube
video journal he put together to chronicle his comeback after surgery.
As he explained, he dealt with her death in roughly the same way as his father's death
and his coach's: through athletics.
In this case, he wrestled a scheduled one-hour match with Brock Lesnar just a day after Le'Anne's
passing, and while that was an incredible match, in retrospect Angle realizes it was
a pretty awful grieving mechanism.
“I didn’t deal with that, either.
I went out there and had one of the best matches of my life.
I hid the pain.
And you have to realize, dealing with the pain is a part of life.”
Tragedy and murder
Though Kurt Angle's life has been largely clean and drama-free since around 2014, he
recently had to deal with one of the worst things anyone could possibly face: the realization
that a family member is a killer.
On September 20th, 2015, Angle's brother David called 911 to say his wife, Donna, was unconscious.
According to him, the two had a domestic argument that ended with her death and shortly after,
David Angle was arrested and charged with homicide.
In June of 2016, David pled guilty to a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, and was
sentenced to a maximum of ten years in prison.
While Kurt wasn’t involved in this incident, any death in a family can be difficult to
deal with, and one as senseless and violent as this can be truly haunting.