The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana
Release Date: July 13 2017
Guest: DJZ
Recap by: Josh Coulson
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Newsworthy items
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- DJZ once wrestled a show on a beach for next to no fans while he was stranded in Japan for three weeks.
- He learned to become a DJ in real life so that his wrestling persona wasn’t so one-dimensional.
- His mother was a mail order bride.
- He performed at a tournament in Arena Mexico in 2016 alongside Jinder Mahal and Sabu.
- He has a pin in his wrist from where he broke it during a wrestling match, but continued to perform with it for a month before getting it looked at.
- DJZ suffered a very serious injury earlier this year that resulted in his colon rupturing and him bleeding internally.
Subjects covered (with timestamps)
0:00- Start of show
7:48- Song of the week
10:29- Interview begins
26:55- Impact Wrestling
34:21- Lucha training
43:59- Injuries
1:04:38- Close of show
Show highlights/rundown
Colt opens the show in the usual way by telling the listeners where they can download the show and plugging some of his merchandise. He then fills us in on what he’s been up to over the past seven days, which included the lecture he gave in the U.K..
During the lecture, Colt told the story of him making it to WWE only to be released and then how he has made a success of his podcast since then. He also goes into detail about the various different types of people he had the opportunity to meet while he was there.
He equates the experience to his podcast and how he gets the opportunity to interview someone completely different every week. That’s when he reveals that this week his guest is DJZ.
This week’s song of the week is a remix of Gangrel’s theme mixed by DJZ, which Colt says is the only reason he’s playing it.
Interview begins
The first topic covered by Colt and DJZ is podcasts. Apparently, DJZ has been telling Colt he’s been thinking of starting up a podcast for five years, but because there are already so many wrestling podcasts he’s shying away from the idea.
Colt gets into talking about wrestlers who do non-wrestling podcasts like Ken Anderson, who does a political based podcast, and thinks that it doesn’t make sense and you should stick to what you know.
DJZ discusses trying to get into stuff outside of wrestling but it never worked out. He once DJ’d on Eminem’s radio station.
The pair then get into a conversation about how Chris Jericho successfully does a little bit of everything from wrestling to podcasting to hosting game shows.
Both of them then reminisce about the last time DJZ was on Art Of Wrestling, around five years ago when the two of them appeared on a Lucha Vavoom show.
DJZ then gets into some of the weirdest wrestling shows he’s done. One time he got stranded in Japan for three weeks and ended up wrestling a show on a beach while he was stuck there.
He tells a story about missing a flight to Japan and feared getting blackballed from shows over there. He had to beg his mom for the money to fly over there but she could only get him a one way ticket. He had to wait for a cheap ticket home which wound up being three weeks later. It was during that time that he wrestled on a beach and also in a twelve foot ring in a wrestling themed bar.
Colt has also had to compete in a twelve foot ring. The two discuss not being able to wrestle properly in a ring that small but the fans still expecting them to.
DJZ touches on being in a lot of credit card debt following his injury in Mexico, which he gets into in more detail later, and his mum having to bail him out.
He tells Colt that his mum made a comment about DJZ’s lifestyle, and he probes him to go into more detail. DJZ reveals that when he was younger, he would be more careless with money and spend a lot of it on expensive clothes. Colt says that’s the opposite mentality that most wrestlers have, especially on the indy circuit.
DJZ says that once he was with Impact he just assumed he would always be making that kind of money, but then Spike TV pulled the plug and everything changed, which is something he has now learned from. Before that he would spend $2000 on custom suits.
Impact Wrestling
The two of them then get into DJZ’s time with Impact Wrestling. DJZ says that he felt he was too one dimensional, so that’s when he added the DJ layer. He also reveals that his mother was a mail order bride.
He says he had thoughts of needing an angle for years, and that getting the job with Impact wasn’t the hard part but keeping it was where the real work came in. Colt reveals that he once went for a job with TNA and was told that he needed a character like the Human Tornado.
All DJZ had before his DJ gimmick was that he was a wrestler who loved wrestling, so he thought about what else he loved and because it was music that’s where the idea came from.
It wasn’t just a gimmick either, DJZ learned how to DJ in real life. Luckily there was a team at the time in TNA who needed their own DJ and they thought of DJZ. At the time, he thought his release from the company was imminent so that may have saved his job.
Colt asks why he thought he was on his way out the door, and DJZ says he’s a very paranoid person and always thought that. That’s also why he tweaks his character so much.
DJZ then returns to talking about his time with Impact and having to stand out after the company signed a multitude of X Division wrestlers.
While DJZ thinks he has to change his look and his gimmick constantly, Colt points out that he has been wearing the same singlet and doing the same thing for years. The two then discuss which is right and which is wrong, with Colt arguing that if you constantly change, people will never associate you with anything specific.
Lucha training
DJZ’s DJing came to an end when he started lucha training in Chicago. He cites Colt as being the one who made him realize that he needed to put his focus back into wrestling and not half-ass it any more.
DJZ says that the wrestlers who trained him at the time really pushed and motivated him, and Colt remembers seeing him start to appear in lucha matches, even though it wasn’t what he was known for.
DJZ does point out that he has utilized lucha libre as a part of his style for years, but that style started to change because he trained in lucha properly with actual lucha wrestlers.
He also helped the wrestlers who trained him by giving them the opportunity to get booked outside of Chicago and outside of what they knew. Apparently, a wrestler known as Gringo Loco was the only one to take advantage of that.
DJZ’s foray into lucha wrestling began to help him get booked at lucha libre shows down in Mexico and he was getting noticed more and more.
He recalls a huge tournament he did at Arena Mexico last summer that also featured Sabu, Jinder Mahal, and Michael Elgin. Despite the big names on the card, DJZ wrestled somebody called Hip Hop Man. Colt says the two should be tagging together.
At first, DJZ was pretty disappointed he was paired with Hip Hop Man considering who he could have been wrestling, but it turned out to be the best possible scenario. The county that Hip Hop Man was from had just beaten Mexico in a soccer match, so DJZ was an instant face as Hip Hop Man wore the jersey of his country’s national team.
Injuries
DJZ then starts talking about all the injuries he has suffered in the past year. Since turning 30 his body has just started to go downhill.
He tells a story about wrestling at Taco Fest, and even though he didn’t want to wrestle there he got talked into it because it was only a mile from his house. He assumed that no one would really be watching, but when he arrived it turned out there were hundreds of people in the crowd.
Even though there were a lot of people, he assumed most were not wrestling fans so he felt like he needed to protect the honor of the business. He went into his match wanting everyone to leave thinking that it was awesome, so he did some crazy spots, including jumping off of a truck. Colt is caught rolling his eyes but admits that he gets it.
The spot in the match that broke his wrist happened in the middle of the crowd. It involved him being thrown into a stop sign, and when he fell to the ground he planted his wrist and the weight coming down on it broke it in two places. He still continued to wrestle with it for a month after that because he didn’t realize it was broken.
When he finally found out it was broken he was told they would have to put a screw in if he ever wanted it to have a full range of motion again.
DJZ’s worst injury occurred in Mexico City. He took a 450 Splash from his opponent and he says it felt like someone had dropped a bag of cement on him. At the time he thought he had broken a rib and back in the locker room he couldn’t catch his breath.
He recalls laying in the locker room for an hour before someone asked if he was okay. He was told that he looked really pale and he said he didn’t feel good. Some paramedics then took him away in an ambulance.
While in the ambulance, he recorded a video that he posted on Twitter telling people that he was going to hospital. At the hospital they gave him an IV and he felt better so they released him.
Back at his hotel he didn’t feel good. When using the bathroom, he says that he ‘s**t pure blood’ and at that point realized something was very wrong. He tried to leave the bathroom and fainted. When he woke up he had no idea how much time had passed.
Hotel staff called an ambulance and he went back to the hospital. Before the hospital staff would do anything they demanded $500, which is how the aforementioned debt came to be as he handed over his credit card.
Tests revealed that DJZ was bleeding internally as his colon was ruptured. They had to operate and revealed there was a 20% chance he would need a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
They then told him that they couldn’t do the surgery until he paid a further $2,000. He obviously paid it and that adds to the debt he has already begun to rack up. He says as he went under for the surgery it’s the most scared he has ever been in his life. They removed two liters of blood during the surgery.
Following the surgery, he was told that he wouldn’t be able to wrestle again for a long time, but decided he would be back in a ring eight weeks from that point. He estimates that he lost $10,000 in total due to the injury.
Following the injury, DJZ has been having panic attacks, something he never suffered from before, because he’s always worried that the worst could happen. He’s been told that something as simple as a hernia could now be a very serious issue for him.
He was told by a doctor that he shouldn’t wrestle again until August but has already been wrestling. People have told him he’s crazy for doing so, but he thinks if he’s a true professional then he should be able to work around his injuries.
Colt then asks DJZ where fans can send their best wishes to him and he reveals where we can find him on social media. He also adds that after a further scheduled CT scan he will hopefully be wrestling again on a much more regular basis.
DJZ closes by saying he loves the idea of fans watching him now thinking that he really shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing before Colt returns to the studio apartment for some plugs and upcoming events.
Review (7/10)
While DJZ has had a pretty long and storied career up until this point, it’s the last year of it that really grabs your attention during this episode of Art Of Wrestling. The story about his injury in Mexico City is a pretty incredible one, and he’s extremely lucky to still be alive judging by what he went through. Many will think that he’s crazy for returning back to the ring so soon, but clearly DJZ doesn’t agree. He loves the pro wrestling business, maybe a little too much, but it’s hard not to admire his dedication to returning to action despite what he is still going through.
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.
For more, check out last week’s recap of The Art of Wrestling with Matt Cross.
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