The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana
Episode 303 – Teddy Hart
Release Date: May 26, 2016
DIRECT LINK TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD
Report by Chris Davidson
Hot Topics
– Teddy Hart goes in depth on his life before WWE and his brief time on the WWE roster.
– Colt Cabana recaps his last few weeks on the road, his return to ROH, and teases his upcoming projects.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 – Introduction
8:06 – Song of the week
12:19 – Teddy Hart interview
21:24 – Hart talks his early life
34:30 – Hart talks wrestling in Canada
44:20 – Hart talks early wrestling matches and training
53:30 – Hart talks about his friends, almost dying before his WWE tryout, and his time in WWE
1:07:01 – Hart wraps up the interview
1:11:43 – Colt wraps up the show
EPISODE SUMMARY
0:00 – Introduction – Colt opened the show talking about being a journeyman, and the recent journey he has been on the past few weeks. Colt hyped this episode as an exciting episode, and credited Tyson Kidd for setting up this interview with Teddy Hart. Colt called this episode great, even though they didn’t get into any conspiracy theories about Hart, and talked Hart up. Colt plugged his upcoming Pro Wrestling Fringe episodes on Howl.fm, releasing on June 20, and his previous episodes will be available on Howl.fm.
Colt talked about his return to ROH, which he felt was phenomenal, and talked about wanting to be the ROH World Heavyweight Champion in the future. Colt talked about his recent travels, as he hasn’t released a standard episode the last few weeks. Colt was on an episode of Doug Loves Movies, a podcast, and is in New York filming a TV show he isn’t sure he can talk about. Colt also talked about a recent show he was on where he held a baby and gave a shout out to Chaos Wresting.
8:06 – Song of the week – The song of the week this week is “Prelude to the Screw Job” by Nathan Haskell.
12:19 – Teddy Hart interview – Colt mentioned they were filming in front of a small audience and asked about Teddy Hart always having a group of people around. Hart talked about his entourage, including someone to watch his cat, and mentioned an escort agency he ran. Hart’s ex-wife was running the escort service, where she basically operated out of her house with a phone operator sending girls out from different cities. Hart talked about the downfall of her business and his wife working as an escort the last year of their marriage. Hart went into the specifics about the agency, and his participation in the escort service. Colt asked Hart about when life was boring, before he became known for his partying.
Hart referenced C.M. Punk, Tyson Kidd, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Godfather, and Mabel as wrestlers who work hard, but live fairly simple lives without partying. Hart tied partying in to the escort lifestyle and noted that his wife was able to rebound from her service’s failure quickly by servicing high-end clients. Hart said that even when he was little, he lived near a gym with sex workers on the corner and didn’t really have a boring time in his life.
21:24 – Hart talks early life – Hart said that when he was little, he never had any kids to play with, and that’s why he’s so weird. Hart went in to his dad moving to Calgary for work before anyone else was really in Calgary. Hart’s dad opened a gym since wrestling was big in Calgary, and wrestlers needed a place to work out. Hart talked favorably about his parents, and credited his eccentricity to his grandfather. Hart praised everyone in his family for their personalities and talked about the family’s relationship with Bret Hart. Hart talked about growing up with sex workers giving him advice about doing chemical drugs, smoking cigars as young as six or seven years old, and shooting hockey pucks at johns trying to pick up women until a prostitute told him that he was killing her business.
Since Hart grew up in a gym, he has never liked going to the gym, perhaps to the detriment of his career early on. Hart credited mushrooms and marijuana as helping him see a different side of life. Hart talked about his brother’s death due to a flesh-eating virus, which he said “destroyed” his dad. Between 16 and 18 years old, Hart sold crack cocaine and one weekend made $30,000. Hart’s dad threatened to have him thrown in jail if he found him selling crack again, but didn’t mind if he sold marijuana. Hart’s dad eventually made him live outside the house to keep him in line.
34:30 – Hart talks wrestling in Canada – Hart talked about Stampede Wrestling getting bought out by WWF and about his dad helping pick out talent for WWF. Hart went in depth about the mentality that wrestlers have, and having that same mentality. Hart’s dad realized Hart was working people over when he was younger, and that he had more charisma than Bret Hart. Hart brought up Bret’s good looks as one of the reasons he got the push that he did, and said C.M. Punk likely wouldn’t have gotten the same push if he wasn’t as attractive.
Hart didn’t want to be a wrestler until he saw Rey Mysterio, Jr. and other luchadores. Hart talked about breaking in new wrestlers during a sold out rodeo, and how nervous he was when he performed at his first rodeo. Hart’s training in Stu Hart’s dungeon wasn’t conducive to being a smaller wrestler and wanting to be Rey Mysterio. Hart also talked about his father’s time as a wrestler, and how bad his dad was at throwing worked punches.
44:20 – Hart talks early wrestling matches and training – Colt asked why Hart was chosen to be work a WWE camp when he was so young. After his match, where he did every move in the book, Undertaker told Bret Hart that they can’t be doing every single move they knew, and they had to be spoken to by the higher-ups. Hart said he was the first to do a back flip off the top rope (similar to Daniel Bryan’s flip after getting thrown in the corner). Hart ended up working with wrestlers in Canada for WWE and was sent to train with Dory Funk. Hart brought up his history of wrestling around 16 years old, and working bar shows with a fake ID and selling drugs. Once Hart went to Dory Funk’s dojo, he was no longer able to sell drugs, and just trained in a regimented system.
53:30 – Hart talks about his friends, almost dying before his WWE tryout, and his time in WWE – Hart went back to Colt’s earlier question about being boring, and talked about a test he conducted where he tried to see who would correct him and who wouldn’t, because he knew the people who didn’t help him were trying to watch him burn. Hart told a story about holding Tyson Kidd down to try to make him smoke marijuana, until a friend of his told him he can’t take away Kidd’s free choice. Hart talked about some of the horrible things harder drugs have made some of his friends do. Hart talked about his friends and lifestyle, and circled back to his tryout at 17, which his dad said was his chance to turn his life around.
Hart told a story about accidentally sucking some squid down his windpipe and almost dying right before he was supposed to go to Dory Funk’s dojo. After the squid was out of his throat, Hart’s dad took him to the airport and told him this was his shot, so he better make the most of it. Hart jokingly told his dad he would be the youngest-ever WWE signee, which he ended up being. Bruce Pritchard called his dad and told him that Hart was the best pound for pound wrestler they’d seen, and that he was getting a million dollar contract. Hart’s dad wouldn’t sign the contract, and tried to ruin the deal before Pritchard signed the contract as Hart’s guardian. Hart said he got a few thousand dollars each week and he wasted whatever he got. Hart didn’t want to do the work, and kept making mistakes in WWE, including rolling a joint in front of Kurt Angle.
1:07:01 – Hart wraps up the interview – Hart used the word “retarded” and Colt told him it’s not a good word to use. Hart seemed upset to learn he was saying something offensive, and briefly mentioned he respects and tries to be giving to disabled fans. Hart said he respects Colt and will no longer use the R word in interviews, because it is an improper way to speak. Hart apologized to the listeners for trying to cover a lot of ground in the interview with not a lot of time.
Hart finished talking about his time in WWE where he killed his own career making mistakes, and talked briefly about Bret Hart hurting, and then helping, Tyson Kidd, Natalya, and other’s careers. Hart plugged his social media, although he didn’t know his Twitter handle, and plugged a new game he is working on. Hart praised Colt for being a great wrestler Colt ended the interview
1:11:43 – Colt wraps up the show – Colt said love him or hate him, Colt’s job is to give wrestlers a platform to talk and it’s our job to judge the wrestlers before plugging Hart’s recent appearances on a few other podcasts. Colt plugged his upcoming events, thanked Teddy Hart and his quiet friends who were smoking a lot of marijuana during the interview. Colt thanked his tech help and sponsors before signing off.
Overall Score & Review
Score: 8.6 – This episode was something else. I wasn’t overly familiar with Teddy Hart, but now probably know more about him that I would have wanted to. Hart hit the ground running this week, talking about his time with an escort service and just kept plowing through with story after story about his time in wrestling, at least until he left WWE.
Hart mentioned being caught up on one of Colt’s early questions, about a time in his life when he was boring, and he kept circling back to the aspect of his life. This episode was quite entertaining, but it could easily be part one of a much larger Teddy Hart podcast saga. According to Colt’s episode wrap-up, this episode had a lot of audio issues initially, but aside from a few times where Hart was clearly not talking into the mic, they weren’t distracting. This episode is very entertaining, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Teddy Hart or the Hart family.
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