Kurt Angle on Loss to Corbin: 'My Job Is to Leave WWE by Doing the Honors'

Kurt Angle didn't like losing to Baron Corbin at WrestleMania 35 either.

He just recognizes it was the "right thing to do."

In a response to a Facebook question, Angle said:

"I would have liked to go out with a win, but I understand why it didn't occur. Many people believe that I should have had a different opponent. Maybe. Maybe not. But my argument as to why it should have been Corbin is pretty strong. As a HOFer and Legend in WWE, I came to my final match last Sunday. It was my retirement match.

"As a legend, or HOFer, or whatever you want to call me, my job is to leave the WWE by doing the honors for a younger talent. I did that. I would have loved to have won, but I don't think I would have properly played my role if I did. You leave the company better than it was before you came. I think I was able to do that by losing to Corbin and then getting laid out on Raw the next night to Lars (Sullivan). It may have felt wrong, but it was the right thing to do. Agree to disagree."

Angle's WrestleMania program with Corbin was widely panned as an unbecoming end to one of wrestling's all-time greats. The Lone Wolf's momentum has been essentially nonexistent since he ditched the biker gear for slacks; his general manager push never got over with fans, and his feud with Angle had mostly been abandoned in the months prior.

While there was some logical sense to the story, it was a program fans had little investment in. The issue was not necessarily that Angle would go out on his back; that's an understood tradition. We've seen countless examples of legends losing their final match—or in many cases what we thought was their final match. Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker and others all took losses in what was built as their last WWE appearance, but they were given proper stories to go out on.

That said, it says a lot about Angle's consummate professionalism that he agreed to at least attempt to put Corbin over.