During his appearance on Stone Cold's Broken Skull Sessions, Kurt Angle talked about the original contract he was offered by WWF in 1996 following his gold medal win in the olympics.

"He (Vince McMahon) reached out to me right away. He gave me a nice deal, a 10-year deal and a multi-million dollar contract. I was relatively surprised. Well, for me it was a lot. It was $500,000 a year for 10 years. It was overwhelming because I didn’t make any money up to this point. All I did was train for the Olympics."

"That was my life so it was hard to pass up at the time. But my agent at the time said, ‘You’re not doing this fake crap.’ I was like, ‘I could be a wrestling coach and for the next four years, I could do the appearances and make as much money as I can.’ But once the Olympics are over, it kind of dies down. I left my agent a couple of years after that. I contacted WWE and they did not give me the same contract. They told me I had to work my way up and try out."