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In 2006, Angle asked for a part-time deal with WWE. He broke down in a meeting with CEO Vince McMahon, telling the billionaire: “I can’t do this anymore.” When McMahon refused, Angle asked for and was granted a release from his contract. Weeks later, he got that part-time deal when he signed with TNA Wrestling. The move wouldn’t pan out like he’d hoped.

Still struggling with his own demons, Angle spent what should’ve been the prime years of his career with a company that wasn’t adamant about drug testing. It didn’t help that the locker room was filling up with wrestlers who hit their primes in the early 1990s when drug testing was a myth and drug use – steroids and otherwise – was rampant. The TNA locker room loved its alcohol. So too did Angle, who resorted to trying to find his high by sucking it out of the bottom of a bottle.

Nonetheless, Angle won every championship belt the company had to offer between 2006 and 2013, but when the DUI charges began to add up, he could no longer hide his struggles within the confines of the ring ropes. Rehab only became an option because his lawyer suggested it could strengthen his court case to have his last DUI charge thrown out. Ten years after he was first hooked on pills, Angle checked in, becoming the ninth member of his family to go to rehab.

Would he have gone had his court case not hinged upon that detail? “Probably not,” he admits.

Inside, he was surprised to see other people worse off than he was. There were heroin addicts and those who resorted to burglary to fuel their addiction. Angle was at rock bottom, but he didn’t see it that way. He still had his job. And even he wonders how he still held on to that.

While Angle speaks about these details of his addiction, his newborn’s cries force him to pause in between thoughts. After nearly a year off from working for any wrestling company – he finally left TNA in 2016 – Angle is now a family man.

Most of his wrestling is done at home in play-fights with his kids. Idolizing their father, they wear mini gold medals around their necks. Angle is sober now. He’s hoping to help others beat their own demons. In February, Angle released AngleStrong, an app that allows recovering addicts to check in with other users every day, receive encouraging messages and get to chat with the Olympic gold medalist once a month for advice.

His Hall of Fame induction doesn’t come with a return to the WWE ring – though Angle admits he’d still love yet another chance. The ring may have broken Angle’s body and sent his life reeling. And yet, to him, it was the one thing that stopped him from falling into an even darker place: “The marriage, the injuries, the personal relationships, all the travelling. Everything was shit except that ring. It was my saving grace.”

But just as he once wrestled in that ring with a broken neck, he wrestled outside of it with a broken life – one he may have finally repaired.

• Email: vferreira@postmedia.com | Twitter: VicF77