Kurt Angle has been an interesting character on the wrestling scene for the last 10 years. He has been at the very top as the WWE Champion and the very bottom as a drugged up guy with his release papers. While I am not going to pour scorn on anything he did in WWE, far from it, I will look at his work in TNA, and come to the conclusion that it is in the smaller promotion where he thrived the most.
To begin with, we have to look what the word thrive means exactly. I'm not one to bring dictionary definitions into a debate, but thrive means to develop or to prosper, and I will show in this debate how Angle was able to do these things better in TNA than he did in WWE.
Let us begin with the more difficult of the two, the development. Angle in WWE was essentially the same character from day one to the day he left. He turned heel a few times, and he turned face a few times, but his character was by and large the same condescending I'm better than you because I have an Olympic Gold Medal character.
Since moving to TNA, we have seen new sides of Angle. He debuted as a more traditional babyface, and since then we have seen through is relationship with his wife and then with the main event mafia, we've seen his interaction with a stable where he isn't just acting in the same manner as he did as a singles wrestler. This wasn't true of his stints in Team Angle, nor in Team RECK.
He obviously hasn't got any younger, and it isn't true to say that his matches have been any better in TNA than they have been in WWE, Angle has certainly widened his repetoire in the types of matches he has participated in. Angle largely stuck to standard triple threat and one on one matches in WWE, with the exceptions being his 6 man hll in a cell and the three stages of hell type match with benoit. In the two years he has been in TNA he has competed in ladder, pole, king of the mountain, last man standing matches etc. This is a clear development on the part of Angle.
So with the development side of thriving clearly wrapped up, we need to look at the success side. As ever in wrestling, this has a multiple-fold meaning, the actual success in terms of drawing ability and the kayfabe success are true of any wrestler, but for Angle, there is a further benefit, which I shall discuss later.
We'll start with kayfabe. It is too easy to say that Angle has won fewer championships in TNA, but that is obviously flawed because he hasn't spent as long a time there. What is fare is to look at percentages and averages.
Angle won 11 titles in WWE in the 2477 days between his in ring debut and his release. That averages as a title every 225.2 days. He held titles for 476 days, which works out that he spent 19.2% of his time in the company as a champion. He has won 5 titles in the 1034 days since his debut in TNA. This averages as a title every 206.8 days. He has held titles for 412 days, which works out that he has spent 39.8% of his time in the company as a champion, more than twice as long as he did in WWE. Therefore, he was a bigger success in TNA, kayfabe wise.
Angle's successes as a draw are even more apparent. Angle's departure from Smackdown at the 2005 draft didn't affect the ratings at all. The four week average before he left the brand was 3.175 and for the four weeks after he left was 3.25, so clearly no business there. Over on Raw the four week average before he arrived was 3.85 and the average of the four weeks after his arrival was 3.725, thus showing he had next to no effect on the ratings, and the little affect he did have was a negative one. Over in TNA, the average for the 6 weeks before he got there was 0.79 and for the 6 weeks after he got there it was up to 0.85, a noticible rise. If you take it from his actual in ring debut, it rises to 1.03, a full 0.2 ratings rise. Angle is an asset to TNA, he was another cog in the machine at the WWE, which to me, makes him a bigger success, and therefore proves he thrived more.
My third and final point for his prospering in TNA is the obvious health benefits. Angle has gone from being a shell of a man so reliant on painkilling drugs that he was fired to being in a position to be considering an MMA career, despite his age and injuries. Here, on a very personal level, we can see that he has prospered in TNA, and I think that therefore I can conclude that Kurt Angle has prospered and developed far more in TNA than he ever did in WWE, and therefore, by definition, he has thrived more in TNA.
