How Kurt Angle Won an Olympic Golden Medal with a Broken Neck

What you did in the Olympics with a broken neck is just nothing short of insane. How did you do that? I didn't have a choice. What happened was I got thrown on my head in the first round of the Olympic trials. What happened was I got thrown on my head the first round of the Olympic trials and I broke my neck and I didn't know it so I kept wrestling. Arms were numb and my neck was in excruciating pain and I wrestled through to semis and won and then I had to go on to the finals and wrestle and I won there. So I won the first round of the Olympic trials with my neck broken. I went home the next day and I went to my doctor and he took an MRI of my neck. He said, you have four discs or four broken vertebrae and two discs sticking directly in your spinal cord. He said, you can't wrestle anymore, you're done. I was devastated, man. I didn't know what to do. I figured I better get a second opinion. So I went to another doctor and he said basically the same thing but he said, when is the next round of the trials? I said, six weeks. He said, you know what, I might be able to get you ready by then. I said, what's your plan? He said, well, you're not going to be able to train much. You're going to have to let your neck rest and heal for the next six weeks and it won't be completely healed but it'll be healed enough that you can still go and what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a doctor travel with you and this doctor is going to stick you with 12 shots of Novocain in your neck five minutes before each one of your matches. He said, therefore, you won't feel the pain, you'll forget your neck is broken and you'll wrestle more freely. But he said, I'm warning you, an hour after your matches are over, you're going to be in excruciating pain from the abuse your neck takes during those matches. And he said, are you okay with this? And I said, yes, and it worked. Wow. What a decision to make. Yeah. I didn't have a choice. I mean, there was no guarantee I was going to make the Olympic team in 2000 or 2004. This is my one time. This is my one shot. Imagine those guys you beat realizing a guy with a fucking broken neck just kicked my ass. I never thought about that. Not only did he beat me, not only did he win, he won with a broken neck. Amazing. Yeah. So I went to the Olympics and we did the same thing there. Wow. And I was able to get through it and that's when I retired and I retired for a few years and that was that. Did it heal up a hundred percent or has it always been fucking with you since then? I always had problems with it, you know, especially my motor skills and my hands. I broke my neck four more times in the WWE and it got worse and worse. I mean, I have nerve damage in my neck. I don't have, I lost three inches in both arms and they atrophied because my neck was just so messed up and I've had five surgeries and none of them have really worked. I'm going to end up having to have fusion, which will be down the line. Have you done stem cells? I tried. It didn't work. It didn't do it. Where'd you go? South America. I forget which, which country I can't remember. Columbia. Yeah. Columbia. Yeah. Did you go to bioxcellerator? Did you go to that place? Yes, I did. A lot of athletes, a lot of fighters go down there. Yeah. It didn't work for me. Really? Just so much damage, huh? Yeah. Just too much. I wonder if you just kept going. So what's the extent of it now? I, you know what, I can't feel my pinky fingers. You know, I have a lot of atrophy in my arms. I don't have a lot of strength. I can curl for like 20 pound dumbbells. When I do triceps, I can only push the weights about 60 pounds forward. It's just, I don't have a lot of strength in my upper body. And so the thing is, I, all right, I, if you look at my chest right here, you'll see there's a dip here. Yeah. Okay. That's from my neck. That's a nerve that died and no longer have this muscle in my chest. I have a complete ripple through my chest and it'll never come back. And I'm afraid it's going to happen again. So I'm going to have to have fusion sooner than later, because if I don't, the damage is going to get worse and worse. And then, you know, my arms are going to end up just shrinking to nothing. Have you looked into replacement discs? No, but you know what? I just got an email from a doctor in New York and he told me he was doing it. And so I'm going to call him in this next couple of weeks to see if we can set up an appointment. Aljermaine Sterling, the former UFC Bantamweight champion, he injured his neck really badly and then got fouled in a title fight. Actually it was a very controversial because Pyotr Ion, the Russian cat who hit him with a knee to the head while he was down, lost his title that way. So he lost his title because even though Aljermaine's a sensational fighter, everybody was giving him shit because he won the title because of that. So then he goes and gets a disc replaced in his neck, defends the title, and dominates Pyotr Ion in the rematch, beats him in the rematch, and then goes on to defend the title a couple more times and then just lost it to Sugar Sean O'Malley, but he's got an artificial disc in his neck. It worked. It worked extremely well for him, yeah. It worked. And he's good. He's good to go now. I need to look into that. Titanium. It's a titanium articulating disc. See if you can find it online, Jamie, articulating titanium disc replacement for spinal vertebrae. Cervical, I think. So Eddie Bravo has one in his lower back too. And they- So they do lower backs too? Yeah, they do lower backs. And what they do is they, this is what it looks like. So instead of fusing your discs, which the problem with fusing your vertebrae is you no longer have any movement. With discs, it allows you to have movement. And I think it lasts for a long fucking time. You know, it's crazy. I had a doctor when I broke my neck the second time, he wanted me to do fusion. And he told me that he's going to have to do three levels and then I'd have to retire. And I was like, oh, that might not be an option. It was the same doctor that Stone Cold Steve Austin had. And Steve still has problems to this day with the fusion that he had. Everybody I know that had fusion has real problems. Yeah. And that's why I'm nervous about getting it. And that's why I'm glad I found this doctor in New York City that can do it. I didn't know it was like there was no, there was a doctor out there that could do that kind of stuff.