Colt Cabana Speaks – "There’s A Lot Of People That Don’t Get Me"
Colt Cabana joined Live Audio Wrestling this past Sunday night for 40-minute chat discussing a variety of topics including the success of the ‘Art of Wrestling’, his recent tour with Pro Wrestling NOAH, working without a national platform and a more. The full interview is available here. Highlights are as follows:
Podcast success and comparisons to comedian Marc Meron: “I had been fired by WWE, I was watching my career go on a down slope. I didn’t know how much longer the buzz of, “Scotty Goldman’s back on the Indys now,” or Colt Cabana, and so in the same way, it’s very parallel. I saw what he was doing, and I saw the big buzz of the podcast comedy world, and I know that wrestling is always way behind. I pitched the idea to do my podcast for WWE, and they’re just like, “What? I don’t get it.” I’ll continue to do it myself, I’ll continue to have my fans. Everything’s great, fans are coming out to shows, they’re coming to meet me, I’m talking to them for an hour every week. It’s great.”
The ‘hidden’ personalities that have come out on his show: I always said that the problem with WWE is they don’t get to know their talent well enough. When you know somebody really well, that’s when you can write for somebody, and that’s when you can find their strengths and weaknesses. I didn’t even work hands-on with Paul Heyman, but he’s like a god when it comes to finding strengths and weaknesses. You could tell in that whole ECW product, and even the stuff he wrote in OVW. Unfortunately, Triple H, John Laurinaitis, they don’t know their guy. That’s the beauty of what I can do as a wrestler to help other wrestler, I can help these guys shine. I’ve seen Cliff Compton as a prime example, he’s one of the funniest guys I know. He’s a born entertainer, and you can tell by the podcast, you can tell by anything he does. He’s ready to make anybody money, including himself.
Working with Pro Wrestling NOAH: “For some reason, they brought me over, and I had to recognize what that reason was. That was just to be me, the character, the outgoing, the fun-loving, comedic Colt Cabana. My wrestling always speaks for itself, it’s not like I’m not a skilled professional wrestler, but I think when I bring the whole character, that’s when people really seem to enjoy what’s going on. I made a conscious decision just to be me. We didn’t speak the same language, I don’t speak any Japanese, but the language of comedy was there. With a body movement, or a face movement, or just a sound effect, I would have those Japanese fans laughing. It spoke a lot, and it really instilled a lot of, what I’m doing is right and I’m good at what I’m doing, because I’m able to make these people laugh and I’m able to entertain them.”
Working outside of the major national promotions: “I was willing to take this huge pay cut to be one of the bottom barrel of the WWE guys, just because I have some crazy dream, or I wanna right some wrong of what I did in the past, or I want the ability to show millions instead of hundreds of thousands of people what I’m all about. I think (Shawn) Daivari put it best to me, he’s like, “People either get you or they don’t get you.” There’s a lot of people that don’t get me, and I think that’s just some of the older generation, they don’t get what I’m about. But I do have a lot of people that get me, and those are my hardcore, faithful fans that help me survive. They support me, they support the things that I do. Even though I’m not on a national televised broadcast, or I’m not on Spike or even Sinclair, they still support me, and they still listen to what I have to say.”
Photos of Colt Cabana in TNA
