The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana
Release Date: August 31, 2017
Guest: Billy Kirkwood, Jody Fleisch, and Lionheart
Recap by: Josh Coulson
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Newsworthy items
- Scottish promotion ICW are trying to make their annual show at the Glasgow Hydro the UK’s answer to WrestleMania.
- Lionheart once broke his neck in two places while wrestling. He couldn’t feel anything below his neck for over 30 minutes and was told he would likely never walk again.
- Lionheart has wrestled the likes of Drew McIntyre, Noam Dar, and Wolfgang since being in the business.
- He also has a wrestling school that’s based in Glasgow, Scotland.
- Jody Fleisch has been wrestling since the 1990s and was a part of the first revitalization of British pro wrestling.
Show highlights/rundown
Colt opens the show by announcing that he’s back from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and that this week’s Art Of Wrestling will be the last of the run of live shows he’s been airing. Back to on-on-one podcasts next week.
This week’s live show comes from The Garage in Glasgow, Scotland.
Before bringing on his guests, Colt tells some stories about his time in Scotland and that he wrestled in Kilmarnock. He had to get the train to Glasgow and wound up on the wrong one. After asking some other passengers, he found out he was actually on a train to London. What should have been a 45 minute journey wound up taking seven-and-a-half hours.
On the day of the show he made the journey again and got the right train this time, but as was pointed out to him on Instagram, he got two singles, there and back, instead of buying a return because he didn’t realize that was a thing.
The conductor on the train felt sorry for him when he got the wrong train and he didn’t have to pay for the extra unnecessary hours on top of his original journey.
Colt then broke into more of his travel woes since he’s been in Scotland. He bought a bike on the U.K. version of Craigslist (Gumtree) and then had it stolen. He then had to buy another bike but bought a much cheaper one that wouldn’t turn left.
Billy Kirkwood
Billy starts off by mocking Colt about his train journey and that he didn’t know what a conductor was called. They then joke about The Train Master being a great idea for a wrestling gimmick.
Billy points out that Colt had his bike stolen two years ago also.
Billy checks that he sounds okay as Colt once told him that when he’s around other Scottish people he sounds a bit ‘bagpipey.’ Cabana tells him that he sounds fine and it’s Grado who he has trouble understanding. Billy says that Grado was born eight miles away from where he’s from and he can’t understand him either.
Colt tells a story about Grado bringing a friend to one of his Edinburgh shows once and ruining it because he talked the entire time. When Colt angrily asked who he was, Grado said he didn’t know and had just met him in a bar beforehand.
Billy steers the talk back to Kilmarnock. He tells a story where he offered his seat to a pregnant woman on a bus there, only to find out that the person was neither pregnant nor a woman.
Colt and Billy discuss his guest’s busy schedule, which involves stand up comedy, being the voice of ICW, hosting a breakfast show, and being a ‘double dad’.
The two of them then discuss how ridiculous it is when people think tattoos are a bad idea because of what you’ll look like when you’re old, citing that everyone looks bad when they’re old.
The focus then switches to Billy’s tattoos, one of which is wrestling related.
Billy continues to mock Colt’s train mishap, asking if they don’t have return tickets in America. Colt replies that he doesn’t know because no one takes the train in America.
Colt asks what’s coming up for ICW. Billy talks about the U.K. Championship being defended in the company recently, and that they will be holding another show in the Hydro this November. He says that they’re trying to make that annual event the U.K’s WrestleMania, until they get the real WrestleMania that is.
Billy talks about having to do some social media stuff for WWE and having to put on a less Scottish voice when he did it. He also believes this is the best ICW has ever been.
Sponsor/ads
Lionheart
The show took place the day after the Mayweather – McGregor fight, but Colt steers away from the topic since it’s what everyone will be talking about on podcasts this week.
Colt asks Lionheart about his neck. He took a bad move a while ago and was told at the time that he should have died. Colt asked him what went through his head at the time. Lionheart replies that he heard a crack and then afterwards he couldn’t feel anything for over half an hour.
Colt asks him what exactly was going through his head for that 30 minutes, and Lionheart says he just kept thinking about how screwed his life was if the feeling never comes back. Paramedics moved his arms and he told them that he felt excruciating pain, which they replied was a good thing since he could actually feel the pain.
Following further check ups he discovered his neck was broken in two places and he was told he may never walk again. Colt jokes that he asked the doctor whether he could do a 450 Splash.
Colt then talks about wrestlers being able to recover from horrible injuries and that maybe they’re different to the average person, citing Tyson Kidd’s career ending injury.
Lionheart talks about the beginnings of his career, wrestling with Wolfgang and Drew McIntyre in a company called British Championship Wrestling. He also wrestled with Noam Dar.
Lionheart now helps run a wrestling training school in Glasgow that has been open for three years. He says that they can’t wrestle forever, something Colt jokingly disagrees with.
Colt asks him if he’s named after the Jean Claude Van Damme movie. When he replies yes, Cabana asks why he wasn’t named Bloodsport instead.
Sponsor/ads
Jody Fleisch
Colt introduces Jody by announcing that it’ll probably be really weird, as when he agreed to it Jody didn’t realize it was a live show and thought it was just a one-on-one interview.
Jody is currently a personal trainer. Colt says most of his listeners probably remember Jody from his Ring of Honor and CZW days and that back then he barely weighed anything.
Colt talks about how great it is that there is a revival of British wrestling going on at the moment, and that Jody was a part of the first revival. He talks about how when World Of Sport got cancelled everyone wrestled that one style and had nothing to do. Then when Jody and a few others came around in the late ’90s that began to change.
Jody says at the time there was only really one wrestling school in the whole of the U.K. and anyone in the country who wanted to wrestle gravitated to there.
Jody talks about being a high flier. At the beginning of his career he was the only British guy doing things that are extremely common now such as a springboard.
Colt talks about being a kid and thinking he was going to be like Jushin Liger. Then when he started training he realized he couldn’t be that type of wrestler.
Johnny Storm was another wrestler who came up around the same time as Jody. Colt talks about a photo he has seen of Johnny at the age of 14 where he’s dressed like Jeff Jarrett.
Jody talks about a tour of Japan where he wrestled Christopher Daniels on every night of the tour.
Jody recalls wrestling for Michanoku Pro where he had to portray a character that would be considered extremely racist in today’s product, and probably should have been back then. Colt says that DDT can sometimes be guilty of the same thing.
Colt asks Jody about his first time coming to wrestle in America and he replies that he was one of the only British guys there a the time. Also, because he was in his own little bubble he didn’t feel that much pressure.
Colt recalls his first time coming to wrestle in the U.K., along with CM Punk, and the two of them didn’t think much of it as they believed no one there would really know who they were because they were American.
Colt then brings the curtain down on the show by thanking the venue, his guests, and getting in some plugs and upcoming events.
Review (6.5/10)
This was the final Art Of Wrestling episode that will feature one of Colt’s live shows. Another interesting show, but in all fairness it the least entertaining of all the ones he has released recently. Last week the show featured the likes of Jack Swagger and Tommy Dreamer while this week the names weren’t so big. Nevertheless it was a good listen and the guests were appropriate to Colt’s circumstances at the time, being at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A return to one-on-one interviews for Colt next week. The live shows have been fun though.
Subjects covered (with timestamps)
0:00- Start of show
9:38- Billy Kirkwood
24:46- Sponsor/ads
25:54- Lionheart
39:05- Sponsor/ads
40:02- Jody Fleisch
55:26- Close of show
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 Hornswoggle, Tommy Dreamer, Jack Swagger, and more.
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