Kurt Angle was once told he was one wrong move from a tragic death in the ring during the height of his run in WWE.

The highly decorated amateur and professional wrestler achieved the incredible feat of winning an Olympic gold medal with a ‘broken freakin’ neck’ in 1996, the glory of which is the subject of an upcoming Hollywood movie.

The notoriety gained at the Olympics played a huge part in his transition into the wild world of pro wrestling, making his WWE debut a few years later and going on to enjoy a career that made him one of the all-time greats.

It all came at a tremendous cost, however, with the legendary performer going on to re-break his neck on more than one occasion during a hard-hitting career where he pushed himself to the limits.

He’s admitted to having to work cleverly, telling Sam Roberts he reached a point of shying away from anything that presented a risk to his neck after a receiving a chilling warning from doctors.

They warned the worst could happen with one wrong landing, leading to a change of approach. Angle explained: “I’m not saying that what I did was right, but you could work around your injuries. So you know your capabilities.

“If your neck is broken, you know what you can do and what you can’t do, and you try to stay away from the things that you can’t. That’s the cool thing about WWE.

“I was injured 98% of my career. I was always hobbled with an injury. I always had to work around them. So I was able to do that.

“Not that I wasn’t taking a chance, because when you have a broken neck and you’re wrestling, you land on your neck wrong one more time, and you’re gonna be paralysed.

“That’s what the doctors were telling me – ‘Just do not land on your head.’ They said: ‘You do that, you’re most likely either gonna be paralyzed or you’re gonna be dead.’”

Clearly, communication is key to staying safe in WWE, with Angle obviously aware of his limits and how to manage them.

The seemingly usually-organised Angle did reveal a separate incident that contributed to one of his neck breaks in the ring which came at the hands of Brock Lesnar.

The Beast, Angle recalls, wasn’t given a warning wrestlers would expect going into a match to avoid executing a planned chair shot over the star’s head. The WWE Hall of Famer duly pained the price.

In a 2023 episode of his own podcast, he said: “Brock Lesnar hit me over the head with a chair, and he brought it. I mean, when I tell you he brought it, he really brought it.

“The thing is, me and Chris Benoit both got hit with a chair by Brock that night.

“Chris, before the match told Brock: ‘Hey, swing sideways on my head because I had surgery on my neck, and I don’t want you to come over straight over the top.’”

“I didn’t tell Brock that… he goes over the top and hits me right on top of my head as hard as he could, and I broke [three] vertebrae.

“I had bone chips in my neck, and I had two discs that slid into my spinal cord. So I kind of messed myself up again. This is the third time I broke my neck.”

With a wince, Angle added: “There was a lot of pain with that injury.”

Now 55, Angle is a former five-time world champion in WWE and a Hall of Famer both there and in TNA, where he held the world title on six occasions.