The Olympic Gold medalist revealed he was paid a lot to wrestle, not be a merchandise guy.
During a recent Q&A edition of The Kurt Angle Show, Angle would go on to discuss several topics, including his favorite piece of merchandise while working for WWE. After playfully jokingly saying that he loved the mugs that read ‘You Suck’, Angle stated that the red, white, and blue ‘It’s True, It’s True’ shirt was his favorite.
According to the WWE Hall of Famer, the shirt was well-received by fans, but it didn’t bring in much profit. Additionally, he disclosed that Vince McMahon informed him that his role was to wrestle, not to focus on merchandise sales.
“I have to tell you this, it wasn’t that much money. I wasn’t a merchandise guy,” Angle stated. “Even Vince McMahon came to me and said, ‘Listen, we can’t use the word Olympic. We can’t use the Olympic rings. You’re not gonna do merchandise. I’m gonna pay you to wrestle.’ I was like, ‘Well I do want to make money on merchandise.’ He says, ‘Can’t do it.'”
“Listen, in one year, Austin made $12 million on merchandise. That was the 3:16 shirt. That’s when it came out. $12 million. He told me. I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ He only made two and a half million wrestling. Vince said, ‘I pay you to wrestle.’ Vince, I’m not gonna lie to you, he paid me well. I made more than Austin did with wrestling. I didn’t make nearly as much as Austin did with merchandise. But Vince took care of me on the backend with wrestling. Merchandise, I made, I’ll give you just round about figures, between 700 and 900 grand a year. Wasn’t a lot. It’s a lot of money, don’t get me wrong, but not for being a big star like that. For some reason Vince just told me, ‘Hey, can’t do anything with you with merchandise. So just wrestle.’ I would come up with merchandise ideas and Vince would utilize them, but I didn’t sell like Stone Cold, and I was a heel most of my career, too,” he said.
When asked about his performance during his tenure with TNA/IMPACT, Angle mentioned that his merchandise sales were quite strong during the initial years.
“You know what, I did alright with TNA. Believe it or not, we we were selling pretty well the first few years. I mean, I would say between 2007 and 2010, everybody’s making pretty good money on merch,” he said.
Angle vaguely mentioned his best year’s merchandise earnings at TNA, stating “400 grand.”
h/t from Fightful.
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