Some professional wrestlers will try and wrestle well into the years when they should be thinking about pensions rather than wrestling moves, but not Kurt Angle, as he retired from in-ring action in 2019 at the age of 50. 

Angle had a decorated 21-year career, but what led him to hang up the boots for good was his desire to be remembered fondly by the fans, as he explained during an appearance on "Story Time with Dutch Mantell."

"[WWE] wouldn't even have me wrestle, they wouldn't let me wrestle, I think they thought of me as a liability," Angle said. 

He explained that he thought his run was booked backward as he thought he would wrestle, then become a general manager, and finish in the Hall of Fame, which ended up happening the opposite way around.

"They didn't have any plans to put a title on me, nothing, and I was wrestling extremely well when I got there, but when I got there and I became the GM for nine months, I was inactive for a whole nine months, never got in the ring. When I eventually got in the ring, I wasn't the same person, I felt like that I look like an old man wrestling in the ring, that's how bad it was, and that's why I retired early, because I didn't want the fans to remember me as this broken down old man," revealed the Olympic gold medallist.

Angle also believes that the reason he was booked the way he was in WWE during his final run was due to how he originally left the company in 2006. He stated that when someone leaves a company like WWE in the way that he did, the company, and more specifically Vince McMahon, won't forget that in a hurry.

Please credit "Story Time with Dutch Mantell" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.