EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: AEW Star Colt Cabana

Following our interview with Jon Moxley, which you can check out by clicking here, website editor Louis Dangoor had the chance to sit down with another AEW wrestler in the form of Colt Cabana.

During their half-hour interview, Colt spoke about his AEW debut in his home-state at Revolution, being able to also work for NJPW, the importance of comedy wrestling, members of the AEW roster he feels have a bright future and much more.

You can watch the full interview here, or read the key quotes below. If you use any of the quotes, please link back to WrestleTalk.com and embed the interview into the article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqW0uPWvM9c&t=12s

We spoke to Colt about his AEW debut in Chicago at Revolution and his appearance on Dynamite a few days later. However, Colt has revealed that he was actually not supposed to be on Dynamite the following Wednesday as he was set to be in Japan for the New Japan Cup. However, plans changed:

“Actually, there was a lot of weird politics that were kind of not involved with it, but the essential plan was to debut at Revolution just as a local boy does good. We’re in Chicago let’s got a pop from Colt Cabana, then I was going to go and do the New Japan Cup. The point was, hold on let me try and look at my timeline, yes I was going to go and do the New Japan Cup so I would be gone, so we were hoping people would just assume “oh that was a one-off because he was in Chicago”, and then almost re-debut after I had come home from the New Japan Cup because I had signed before Revolution… Obviously all this went down, that didn’t happen and we just kind of rode this Revolution ride, which was nice because I was supposed to go to New Japan, but the next week, it all kind of changed, not last minute, but it all changed around where I was able to do the thing at Revolution, and then SCU needed a fourth to take on kind of The Dark Order, it was going to be a three-on-four and then it kind of nicely changed into a four-on-four and nicely turned into my AEW television debut. I was spotlighted really nice in it, I won the match with Chicago Skyline and the Superman. It was a real nice spotlight for me.”

Following on from his, we asked Colt if he had signed a similar deal in AEW to Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho, allowing him to also work for NJPW. Here’s what he had to say in response:

“Before I had agreed with AEW, I had agreed to a February and March tour with New Japan. As the talks with AEW came around, I said “I gave my word I would do this New Japan tour, and I’m not going to not do this New Japan tour”, and AEW was like “of course” and specifically Tony Khan. They were like “you honour the dates you took, and then we’ll get it all started April 1″… I’m with AEW, that’s my home team… That was totally open in the negotiation, you know “of course if it’s not a Wednesday, and you’re open, go do New Japan”.

Following his AEW debut in Chicago, his hometown, we asked Colt about his much stock wrestlers put into the town they are working in on any given night:

“I remember I was once supposed to do a dark match for WWE and it was going to be in Milwaukee and I was like “yes this is where I want to do it, the people would know it, the people would know me”. It got changed to the next week and I ended up doing it in Lexington, Kentucky and although there are smart wrestling fans in Lexington, Kentucky, it’s not like Milwaukee, Wisconsin… It is important where that kind of thing happens, so that is part of the chess piece you think about when you do these kinds of things. If I want to establish myself as a babyface, Chicago is the right place to do it, because you know I’ve had billboards in the town for ten years now. I’m almost part of the city.”

Colt then revealed the two members of the AEW roster that he feels have an incredibly bright future, and are ones he urges us to keep an eye out for:

“I would have said Orange Cassidy before he got signed, because I worked with him on the independents many times and I was one of the people who loved the gimmick, I thought it was so funny. I also was a big fan of Sonny Kiss and love that Sonny Kiss got signed. Maybe Sonny Kiss isn’t ready to dominate the world right, but I think with Sonny’s gimmick and the difference, I love difference fringe wrestling styles, and I can assume people who know me know that with my comedic style of wrestling. Sonny is on the same kind of precipice of that, where he is a very different kind of weird almost wrestling style, and that’s what stands out. It’s standing out right now with Orange Cassidy, and I wouldn’t be surprised in 2, 3 or 4 years when Sonny gets really good and his style stands out that it will all start to click. It’s cool that AEW has signed them up and has realised the potential for the future.”

As a comedy wrestler, we asked Colt his views on the importance on comedy in wrestling and how he feels his comedic style actually helps with his matches:

“My life’s goal is to never agree with anything that Jim Cornette says. Sometimes, it’s not like I don’t understand what he’s saying. My wrestling style isn’t so much that we don’t believe we are in a wrestling match. So when I’m in a wrestling match, I’m doing comedy for the sake of having fun, to keep myself loose and to kind of take my opponent off their game. That is my sports mentality to winning a wrestling match. I understand, in this wrestling match, I want to win this match, how am I going to do it? I’m not going to do it like Lance Archer, I’m not that big, I’m not that bad, but I do have wit and I do have shenanigans, and I’m going to use that to my advantage to win. So that is what I enjoy about comedy wrestling, about how we can use those jokes or quirks to put in a match to not only win, but to see that originality and so I love the originality, I talked about it with Orange Cassidy and Sonny Kiss, and that’s the kind of originality I like to put in my matches, the new jokes or the new ways we can play on the tropes, but still keeping it real and still maintaining the reality of professional wrestling.”

Finally, we asked Colt about if he had any reservations on his style translating to a national TV audience, and he said that AEW wouldn’t have hired him if they didn’t have faith in his style getting over with the crowd and working:

“I think that’s why AEW has picked me up, because of the realisation of my style. I don’t think they signed me to be somebody I’m not. I am who I am, I think everyone is aware of that, and that’s what I’ll be bringing to the table and, you know, if they weren’t down for it, they wouldn’t have put me under contract”.

• NJPW
• Colt Cabana
• comedy
• AEW

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