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Submitted by Xan on Sunday, September 3, 2006 at 5:24 AM EST
 "I wanted to be scared again...I wanted to feel unsure again. That's the only way I learn, the only way I feel challenged."--Connie Chung I don't want Kurt Angle to go. I don't want him to die, either. So I guess I'm kind of at a quandary, huh? On top of all that, I'm quite a bit pissed that he let it get to this point. He's one of the greatest performers in this history of this business and this is how he's going to go out? Sure, he might come back, but do we even want him to? Why does he want to? Hasn't he risked his life enough for nothing? Hasn't he lost enough? We're not worth this. We aren't worth his life. We aren't worth his wife. We aren't worth his family. Are we? Of course we're not...except in his own head. What kind of mentality does it take to think like this? He knows he's putting his health, his life, and his family on the line and he still goes out there day in and day out to perform for us and it takes his employer telling him NO MORE to get him to stop. The last time I ever participated in a sport competitively was when I played tight end in 5th grade. I played some intramural basketball in college, and I was a much better player than my 5'10", 230 lb form would indicate, as I had a nice touch on both my passing and shooting, as well as being a strong team defender. But, do I think if I had actually played college ball instead of playing ball in college that I would have been willing to play myself to death on the court or keep taking painkillers to be able to go out there and perform for the fans. Granted, I wouldn't be paid the hundreds of thousands--perhaps millions--of dollars that Angle makes, but I would be getting a free college education. That isn't worthless, but it isn't worth my life, either. On top of all that, I probably wouldn't be getting booed for a living. Granted, at the time of his recent injury against Rob Van Dam at a house show Angle can probably be best described as a tweener, and prior to that he was the top face on Smackdown, but for the great majority of his career he was a heel and the crowd constantly chanted "You suck!" at him. Now, everybody knows Kurt Angle doesn't suck one fucking bit, and I even brought a sign to a recent ECW show that said "Angle Never Sucked," but that's what he came out to just about every night. When he returned from serious neck trauma after having that quick fix surgery that took 3 weeks of recovery time to main event WrestleMania XIX with Brock Lesnar, what did the crowd chant at him? You're goddamned right. And those are the people he rushed back for--that he quite literally put his neck on the line for? "We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."--Max De Pree My personal belief regarding painkillers and performance enhancing drugs is that they shouldn't be illegal without a doctor's prescription. If you need painkillers to take away your pain, why should you be restricted? Likewise, if you feel like it takes steroids for you to be the athlete that you believe you can and want to be, you should be able to go for it. A sports columnist I used to respect named Mike Lupica has compared athletes that are steroid enhanced to cartoon characters and the sports in which they play to cartoons and he says it with no hint that he's exaggerating. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion and I am, of course, entitled to call that opinion what it is: ludicrous. Players, sports, and numbers do not become imaginary just because of something you injest and it's not magic. The damn things only work if you yourself do, as well. You can take those performance enhancers every day for the rest of your life, but if you don't also work your muscles you aren't going to be any better than you would have been by exercising and lifting weights and there's nothing they can give you that can increase your power over the mental aspects of the game. If there was, believe you me, I'd be taking it. I play poker semi-professionally now, and as such I've been known to tell people I'm the best poker they've ever met. Then a lot of them go on to play against the odds, get lucky, and think they've got the tricky game of No Limit Hold 'Em down to a science. Now, what if there was a drug that would actually make me be able to be better at this game, which is all about mental capacity, math, and deception? There's no chance I wouldn't take it--no matter the long term implications for my health. But, let's say I took it for a few years, won the World Series of Poker and a few World Poker Tour events, and generally became respected as one of--if not the--best poker players in the world. If it kept causing more and more detrimental side effects and my health was failing, I'd like to think I'd stop taking it and that's the reason I don't get what Kurt Angle is doing. Maybe when you've won a gold medal with "a broken freaking neck" and headlined Wrestlemania with an excellent performance less than a month removed from surgery to repair said neck(I'm assuming it's the same one. Most don't have two.) you start thinking you can do anything. Not only that, maybe you start to think that everything you do has to be bigger and better than what you've done before and each time you get hurt you have to prove you're tougher than you've ever been. "We all know a fool when we see one--but not when we are one."--Arnold H. Glasgow The problem with that kind of thinking is human beings have limits. As I mentioned earlier, Mike Lupica has recently dropped from highly respected to nothing but an arrogant joke in my eyes, but I'm still going to borrow his incredible statement to make an analogy. According to Marvel Comic mythology, a young soldier named Steve Rogers took a drug during World War II that was supposed to make him better at his job. In fact, it was supposed to make him a "Super Soldier," which it did. Then he was frozen until being thawed 40 years later and he became Captain America. Because of the various red, white, and blue outfits he's worn over the years, I have frequently referred to Angle by that moniker and he certainly has shown superhuman abilities at times; but like Mr. Rogers, he's also shown vulnerabilities that prove him to be as human as the rest of us at his core, and I won't judge him for taking his own Super Soldier serum when needed to do his job and entertain you and me. But, here's the thing and there's really no way of getting around it. We never asked him for any of that and neither did anyone else. There wasn't a fan of the WWF or a member of the organization that didn't think Angle was making a mistake by choosing the shortcut surgery over the reconstructive neck surgery that Chris Benoit, Steve Austin, Edge, and others have had. I would have been just as content with 'Mania XIX if Benoit had been hot-shotted to face Lesnar, which was the reported backup plan. Smackdown was struggling after Wrestlemania XX, as well, but no one asked him to rush himself back from that injury, either. Eddie Guerrero and JBL were starting to get the show rolling just fine without his physical skills and he was doing a decent, though unspectacular, job as GM of Smackdown. So, what I really feel towards Kurt Angle right now is a bit of anger. Is that fair? Maybe, maybe not. I don't care if it's fair or not, though, because when he thought he was being noble and giving us and the WWF our money's worth, he was really being selfish. He was putting the short-term ahead of the long term and was, in essence, betting that a body that's served him well, but has never been close to indestructible, wasn't going to break down again. That was kind of a dumb move, and he isn't the only one that made one. I would say it's almost always a mistake to release the man that a majority of pro wrestling fans consider to be the best wrestler in the world, so I have to believe the WWF has done this for Kurt Angle's own good. Somehow in doing so, however, they've neglected to take into account the very real possibility that they've signed his death warrant. If they had simply suspended the man, he still wouldn't be able to wrestle, he'd still be able to(and required, one would hope) to get some type of help for his problems, he'd still have time to work on his marriage and other personal issues, and you'd be protecting him. The argument could be made that they have a moral obligation to do so, but I won't. Kurt's an adult and he made his choices. He's been unprotected for a long time, but now I hope he can save himself from himself. As bad as he appears to be he may not be able to wrestle in 90 days, but that won't stop Total Nonstop Action from offering him a contract that would make him their biggest star and give them someone that will really give them a chance to compete with the WWF, and who could blame them for doing so? They'd be idiots not to...and we'd be idiots for watching him wrestle himself to death, but we will because Kurt Angle is just that damned good. Of course, there's going to be one more idiot in this equation and that's Angle, himself. It's a damned shame that the "intensity" completely dominated the other portions of his 3 I's. That will conclude today's voyage on The Northern Star. For feedback, please email me atXanManX@hotmail.com, with the words "Northern Star" or "feedback" in the subject line or click here to leave it in the LOPForums. The Northern Star will rise again. Until then, Long days, pleasant nights
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