Kurt Angle had his last match for WWE at WrestleMania 35, but it wasn't the fairytale ending to an illustrious career that many fans had hoped for.

Instead of wrestling against longtime rival and good friend John Cena, Angle faced Baron Corbin at The Showcase of Immortals.

He would end up losing to The Lone Wolf, but as well as putting over a future star on his way out, the match vs Corbin brought an end to a feud for Angle that had started during his time as Raw general manager.

During a recent interview with Collider Live, via SEScoops, Angle explained that it was his decision to retire this year, not WWE's. 

He said: “I decided to retire at ‘Mania. Vince didn’t tell me ‘Listen you’re done after ‘Mania.’ I went to him and said ‘Listen, I want to retire. I’m not able to do what I used to, and if I can’t be the old Kurt Angle, I want to be done now'.

“I was hearing a lot of feedback from people that Kurt looks like he’s in pain in the ring and he’s slower then he used to be, and it’s like ‘Guys, I’m 50 years old, of course I’m slower.”

Angle added that WWE asked him to wrestle Corbin since they've already been involved in a storyline over the past year. He agreed with this decision.

However, he added if he was able to wrestle at WrestleMania 36, that's when he would have faced Cena and given the fans the match they wanted the most.

Angle recalls that Vince McMahon said to him: “You have a program that you’ve been doing for a year; I’m not throwing it away. It’s with Baron Corbin, so whether you want to retire now or whenever, you’re going to wrestle Baron at WrestleMania.

“‘You know what, that’s fair. You’re right.’ I can’t just change the whole thing and what they had planned and say ‘Hey, add Cena in.’ So I think that if it was next WrestleMania [36], it would have been John and I.”

Of course, facing Cena would have been a better way to bring an end to Angle's Hall of Fame WWE career, but it just wasn't to be.