The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana
Release Date: June 8, 2017
Guest: Tyson Dux
Recap by: Josh Coulson
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Newsworthy items
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- Colt was on a podcast called Migs Vs. The World Of Wrestling this week and discussed the topic of insulting fans as a performer.
- Tyson Dux was last on the show in 2010 and was one of Colt’s first guests on Art of Wrestling.
- During an interview with Uproxx, a quote from Tyson talking about WWE not letting him do certain moves was taken completely out of context.
- Tyson is no longer allowed to perform in the United States and is always flagged at the border.
- Dux was meant to be signed by WWE years ago. He performed as an enhancement talent for them for four years before blowing his knee out.
- Tyson’s son appears to already be well on his way to following in his father’s footsteps and the age of only 14.
Subjects covered (with timestamps)
0:00- Sponsors and plugs
0:14- Show begins
6:53- Song of the week
9:42- Interview begins
25:40- Interview with Uproxx
29:22- Can’t cross the border
33:07- WWE and the CWC
40:25- Son and Japan
56:09- Close of show
Show highlights/rundown
Colt opens the show in the usual way, detailing some of the places he’s been and shows he’s performed on over the past seven days.
He then announces that his guest this week will be Canadian wrestler Tyson Dux who has not been on the show since 2010 when the pair were touring the highest point in Canada together.
Colt describes that their last interview revolved around how Tyson was a wrestler who simply couldn’t get a big break, and since then he has via WWE’s Cruiserweight Classic. Also, he isn’t allowed to cross the Canadian border into the United States at the moment.
Colt then discusses a topic he brought up on another podcast about being sensitive when you’re a wrestler insulting fans. He plays a clip of the other podcast he appeared on of him telling a story about a fat person at a wrestling show being called fatty and that simply not being okay.
Colt introduces this show’s song of the week, “Indy Dream Match” by Doug Holland.
Tyson Dux Interview
Tyson Dux begins the podcast by talking about having OCD and that Rhyno is the only one he can share a room with as he also has OCD. He talks about how they wouldn’t want house cleaning to come into their room and they would have a competition to see who could make their bed the best and to see who would make the best housekeeper.
The two of them then talk about how everything they have is self-diagnosed. Colt admits that he has self-diagnosed himself with ADD, anxiety, and dyslexia.
Tyson then discusses his children and that he has a new four-month-old.
Colt talks about a podcast they did that got lost from a few years ago, and the show they did all the way back in 2010 which was one of the first Art of Wrestling shows.
The pair talk about random wrestling tours that pop up in strange places in Canada following on from them discussing performing in Newfoundland together. Tyson says the tours are so remote that there’s no internet and it’s not a good way of getting your name out there. Colt says 20 years ago when people got their information from magazines it would have been a better way to go about things.
Dux reveals that he was on Edge and Christian’s last tour before they went to WWE, and they were already signed at that point. Despite that, he wasn’t in awe of them as he was doing his own thing and trying to gain experience.
Colt says quite the opposite. He tells a story of working with Adam Pearce who signed a WCW deal while he was working with him and it felt like he personally was still so far away from that point and that he would never get there.
Dux explains that to him, the business has always been about the small details and that things like his character and bigger picture stuff have never seemed that important to him, which is probably why he hasn’t really made it. Colt describes it as Tyson preferring a good wrestling hold to whereas he prefers doing something that he wants to go viral.
Cabana then asks where that thought process came from. Tyson says as a kid he loved all wrestling, but nowadays when he watches the likes of Lex Luger that style doesn’t resonate with him.
The two of them then discover their mutual love for the movie Bloodsport. Colt describes it as being pro wrestling in movie form.
Dux says that when most people watch that film they take note of the spin kicks and high kicks, whereas he loved the kickboxing scene where Jean-Claude Van Damme and another actor have a standoff which revolved more around psychology rather than action.
Colt says that his style of wrestling is very much shaped by who his trainers recommended that he watched. He recalls having a tape of Dean Malenko and another of Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger.
Dux says he was never told who to watch and thinks that because he’s Canadian it was just assumed that you would already be watching the likes of Bret and Owen Hart, and Chris Benoit. He says it was the right assumption as he was a huge Benoit fan.
Being taken out of context
Tyson then goes on to talk about an interview he did for Uproxx that got twisted all out of proportion. Cabana completely relates as an interview he did in the U.K. wound up the same way. Colt says something he said about WWE got taken out of context.
The same thing happened to Tyson and apparently, Kevin Owens saw the interview and told him that he can’t say stuff like that. The interview made out that while performing in the CWC he was mad at other performers for being allowed to do moves that he had been told he couldn’t do. He says if anything in the actual interview, he was actually defending WWE.
The people conducting the interview wanted to know backstage stuff and he told them a story about a move he wanted to do on Zack Sabre Jr. but WWE said no, and Uproxx took it completely out of context as after he said that he explained that for the tournament it made perfect sense because you can only give the fans a little bit at a time. He says in hindsight he was stupid for saying it at all.
Border ban
They then get on to the subject of Tyson not being allowed to cross the border into the United States. That’s how Colt puts it, but Dux explains it’s not as simple as that. He’s not banned, he’s just flagged.
He explains that it means he can’t go to America and work, even though he’s been going there for years and has always been honest about how much he earns while there. Once the CWC work came up he was held at the border and questioned about what he was doing, so when he attempted to go back afterward they recognized him and stopped him again.
That second time he tried to explain that he wasn’t taking a job from anybody as he was just going down to train. He was then asked if people would be paying for tickets to the show he would be at, and when he replied yes they said he couldn’t come across as he would be taking money away from them, so now that happens to everybody in his position.
Dux even got stopped when he attempted to cross the border to perform in Rhyno’s charity show even though 100% of the proceeds from that go to charity.
Cabana is amazed by all of this considering how much power the WWE has. He says that he’s pretty sure they instigated a rule change that meant American wrestlers could perform in Canada.
Wrestling in the CWC and for WWE
Colt then gets into more detail about the CWC. He asks if Tyson was the oldest in the tournament and that WWE billed him that way. Dux says that he saw it as more than just the tournament because of his age, and hoped that he would get called back for a coaching role or something like that.
They then joke about it actually being the opposite before Dux reveals that it’s actually been quite difficult because of not being able to wrestle in the U.S. He is now coming to terms with it after realizing that it has nothing to do with how he can perform in the ring.
Colt asks him what his plan is now that he only wrestles in Canada, but Dux says that there is still hope and that it doesn’t have to be WWE. He discusses maybe getting a break in England or Puerto Rico.
Cabana asks about his exposure in the CWC, and also about him popping up on Sunday Night Heat and TNA. Dux says that those older appearances would really boost his bookings and lists some wrestlers he got to perform with, the most notable being Mark Henry.
The two of them say nowadays having a couple of appearances on WWE television doesn’t move the needle as much as it used to.
Tyson had done four years of enhancement work for WWE and right when he was about to get called up he injured his knee.
Colt asks whether Tyson gets bookings simply because it means they can put the ‘as seen in WWE’ notice on their posters and he replies with “absolutely.”
Dux tells a story about how he could basically ask one company to get him anything and because he had been on WWE television they would give him anything he wanted in order to get him on their shows.
Tyson’s son and wrestling in Japan
The interview then takes a bit of a turn and the pair of them discuss that they once had a conversation about when Tyson was going to die. Dux describes that he’s convinced he was going to die young because people in his family historically don’t live very long.
Apparently, the conversation began when they discussed talking about Tyson’s child becoming a wrestler, and that he would need to get things sorted for him sooner rather than later.
Colt then talks more about Tyson’s son. Dux says that he’s really smart and he likes how his love of wrestling is completely different from his own. Rather than the subtleties, his son loves big guys wrestling and why big moments stand out.
His son will watch shows and then Dux will seek out his opinion on their way home together and claims that his son is already extremely smart to the business at the age of 14.
Colt equates the style of wrestling Tyson enjoys to being a Japanese style of wrestling, which switches the conversation to Dux’s time wrestling in Japan.
Dux says that All Japan asked him to stay following a period of inactivity while wrestling for Zero1, and now it’s been around three years since he last got a call from All Japan.
He says that if things had worked out he would have definitely moved to Japan, as at the time he wasn’t married and he would have brought his kids with him.
They talk about wrestlers who have made a technical style of Japanese wrestling work for them outside of Japan and that it has become mainstream in the last five years. Tyson says that nowadays fans get bashed for not knowing who someone like Will Ospreay is.
Dux replies to Colt by saying it was more than just the style of wrestling, and that he just loved the way of life and how the companies worked in Japan.
Tyson Dux was once a truck driver alongside being a wrestler, and now that he’s not he couldn’t be happier. He even mentions maybe retiring completely from normal work outside of wrestling as his wife is a nurse and earns a lot more money than he does.
Dux says that he’s attempting to get in touch with U.K. guys that he knows and the two of them then joke about Tyson being a part of the new U.K. show that WWE is starting up. Colt thinks they should do the same thing with the tiny towns up in North Canada. Tyson thinks it would be a terrible idea.
Colt then begins to wrap up the interview by asking where we can find Tyson online. Dux then reluctantly reveals that he genuinely believed Cabana had a stake in Vine.
The interview then comes to an end and Colt runs through some plugs and upcoming events.
Review (6/10)
Tyson Dux was the oldest performers in WWE’s Cruiserweight Classic last summer, and in all honesty almost a year later I still know very little about him due to WWE not picking him up. This interview has changed that and like so many people on Colt’s show, Tyson seems to be one of the good guys in wrestling and one who has never really gotten that big break he seemingly deserves. Another solid and interesting show from Colt highlighting one of professional wrestling’s hidden gems.
About the writer
Josh Coulson is a journalism graduate from Bristol, England. He has been a pro wrestling fan since the age of 10 and truly fell in love with the business during the build to WrestleMania X-Seven, citing the rivalry between Austin and The Rock as what really got him hooked. Other than wrestling he is a keen soccer fan and a long suffering supporter of his local team Bristol City. You can find him @BristolBeadz on Twitter.
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