The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana
Release Date: May 25th, 2017
Guests: Marty DeRosa, Pete Gas, Mr. Hughes, Marty Jannetty, Mr. Anderson, EC III, and Cryme Tyme.
Recap by: Josh Coulson
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Newsworthy items
- This week’s show is the second and final recording of a live show Colt did at WrestleCon this year.
- Pete Gas got his spot in WWE when Shane McMahon, his lifelong friend, needed a favor even though he had no wrestling training whatsoever.
- Mean Street Posse didn’t get any merchandise because Vince didn’t want to be seen as giving them special treatment.
- Mr. Hughes now has his own wrestling school. Apollo Crews and Heath Slater trained there.
- Mr. Anderson runs a wrestling school in Minneapolis along with Shawn Daivari.
- Anthem brought a real life owl backstage to Impact Wrestling in keeping with the one featured in their logo.
- Ethan Carter came up with the Mark Henry cologne skit in WWE but Vince took over the project because he liked it so much.
- Big Show called JTG because he was mad about something he had written about the two of them in his book.
Subjects covered (with timestamps)
0:00- Introduction
1:09- Live show begins
5:15- Pete Gas
12:24- Mr. Hughes
18:21- Sponsor/ads
19:50- Marty Jannetty
28:54- Mr. Anderson
39:35- Sponsor/ads
40:50- EC III
49:44- Cryme Tyme
1:00:02- Close of show
Show highlights/rundown
Colt opens the show by explaining that for the second week in a row the show will be a live podcast Colt did at WrestleCon over WrestleMania weekend. He also adds that he considered editing out the Marty Jannetty portion of the interview but, like last week with Konnan, decided against it.
The recording of the live show begins with Colt introducing himself, what he does, and where he is.
He then introduces the man who will help him host the show, as he did last week, Marty DeRosa. The two discuss who Marty has been interviewing over the course of the weekend including the likes of Dutch Mantel and Molly Holly. Marty cites Jeff Jarrett as being the person he interviewed this weekend who liked him the most.
Marty then asks who Colt has enjoyed seeing most this weekend, and he replies with Outback Jack, even though he didn’t actually speak to him. They then discuss Outback Jack’s entrance theme which was performed by Rolf Harris, who is now in prison in the U.K. for some pretty heinous crimes.
Pete Gas
Colt then introduces his first guest, Pete Gas. He immediately addresses the fact that he and Pete look very alike.
Colt asks Gas whether he had to cut many promos in WWE. He replies yes but he was always scared.
Cabana then asks Pete to tell the story of how he got a spot in WWE. Pete was friends with Shane McMahon and one week he asked Pete to come along, to dress preppy, and that they would be put on Raw and he just had to tell stories about he and Shane growing up in Connecticut.
Pete equates it to showing up in the NFL and having to block Warren Sapp as he had no wrestling training whatsoever when Shane asked him for this favor.
Marty talks about how when Pete and the rest of the Mean Street Posse were thown from the ring it would look a little different, and that now that makes sense knowing they didn’t have any training.
Colt jokes about how Shane wanted a ‘small favor’ which wound up meaning he needed Pete to appear on worldwide television.
Pete then tells the story of Shane paying him a few weeks later even though he thought it was just a favor, and that they unintentionally got good heat with the crowd so he wound up being kept on with WWE for three years.
Cabana then segues on to how a lot of the stories Pete has been telling can be found in his book, Looking At The Lights. Gas says no one has a story like Mean Street Posse’s, from never taking a bump on your first day to spending three years at the company, to which Colt jokes that Goldberg did.
Marty asks Pete if he was upset he never got the chance to have an action figure of him made, but apparently, he wasn’t allowed that along with t-shirts because Vince didn’t want to be seen giving him special treatment.
Once Pete leaves the stage, Marty asks whether Colt plans on reading his book, knowing that he doesn’t read much, and Cabana says that it has really good pictures.
Mr. Hughes
Colt then introduces his next guest, Mr. Hughes.
Cabana immediately harks back to the beginning of Hughes’ career during his AWA days and confirms with him that he loved being a bodyguard to all those stars back then.
Hughes replies by saying with wrestling you’ve got to go along with whatever niche it is that manages to get you in.
He talks about his time training and that he recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of his time as a wrestler.
Hughes now has his own wrestling school and goes on to talk a little about that, recently training Apollo Crews and Heath Slater among others.
Colt talks about how crazy it is that no matter where he wrestles in the world, there are always people from Georgia that have trained with Hughes and they’re always good.
Hughes discusses how important it is to find the right teacher when training to become a wrestler. Colt then says he never imagined him being a great teacher but clearly he has a passion for it.
Hughes talks about how there are a lot of people who open up schools and people think they’re good teachers but they’re really not and you need to have spent time in the business to train others.
Marty asks whether he approaches people he thinks would make good wrestlers, and Hughes replies with no as people approach him if they want to wrestle.
Hughes then praises the likes of WrestleCon and the fans that go as without them there wouldn’t be pro wrestling.
Marty Jannetty
Colt and Marty introduce their next guest, Marty Jannetty.
Jannetty begins by asking Colt if he can talk about the strip club, but even though he gets Cabana’s blessing, he says that his Boston wife is there so he changes his mind.
Colt then struggles to get Jannetty’s attention back to the interview as he talks about his different wives finding out about each other.
Cabana successfully gets the show back on track by asking Jannetty about the WrestleRock Rumble. Apparently, Jannetty almost got fired from WWE for that song.
Jannetty then starts doing something he calls the Woofty Woof, and that he could never do it on TV because Shawn Michaels wouldn’t let him.
Marty and Colt ask Jannetty to talk about his WrestleMania moments, which somehow gets him talking about his support of Donald Trump.
DeRosa then gets the conversation back on track and Jannetty tells the story of his first WrestleMania, where he and Shawn had to wrestle Akeem and Big Boss Man.
He discusses meeting with Shawn before the match and citing that their opponents were so big that the best idea would be to go and get drunk. He later makes sure that we all know he meant the night before.
His reference of Donald Trump begins to make more sense a little later as he tells the story of him and Shawn meeting him at that WrestleMania as it was at Trump Plaza.
He tells a story about Trump giving him $500 to use in the casino. After Trump walked away he placed one bet then left with the rest of the money.
Mr. Anderson
Colt introduces his fourth guest, Ken Anderson.
Cabana dives straight into the conversation by asking Anderson about his wrestling school.
Anderson goes into more detail about it. It’s a school in Minneapolis that he runs with fellow pro wrestler Shawn Daivari.
Anderson recalls being a personal trainer. He always enjoyed coaching and helping people so he always knew that he eventually wanted to help train new wrestlers.
Colt then asks if Anderson has any WrestleMania moments he would like to talk about. Ken talks about wrestling on his second wrestling show ever with C.M. Punk. He then fast forwards a few years to when he and Punk were climbing the ladder together in a Money in the Bank match at WrestleMania 23.
“I remember we came up there and we were trading punches and he goes ‘hey man’, and I said ‘hey how you doing’ as we’re throwing punches back and forth. And he’s like ‘we’ve come a long way since Whitewater, Wisconsin don’t you think?’ It was a really cool surreal moment. And then I punched him and he bumped off the ladder and I grabbed the thing.”
Colt asks whether Punk talking so casually freaked him out, and that do people do that more at big shows like WrestleMania because the stadiums are so big that no one is ever going to notice.
He then talks about another WrestleMania where he checked on Hornswoggle after bumping him off a ladder only to find out that he was absolutely fine and Hornswoggle thought he just wanted to chat.
Marty talks about wrestlers worrying fans at stadium shows aren’t into the matches because the noise they’re making isn’t trapped by a roof. Anderson says that he actually worries more about small shows than things like WrestleMania.
He says that when he went out at WrestleMania, the sheer amount of people didn’t hit him until after the match and he saw the crowd from a box way above the ring.
The three of them talk about anyone they’ve bumped into over the weekend that has made them regress back to their childhood, with Colt citing Tito Santana as the person who did it to him that weekend.
Marty and Colt than ask about the weird things Ken must have to teach to up and coming wrestlers, and he replies with the only weird things people normally ask are questions like what The Undertaker is like in person.
They then all joke about Undertaker and it being a bad idea to get your wife’s name tattooed on your neck.
Anderson then discusses how he wrestles more internationally now than in the United States.
He and Colt then compare what it was like for them starting out on the independents compared to how it is now. Anderson thinks that years ago a whole card would be stacked, whereas now there are only a couple of wrestlers on each show who are big. Cabana puts that down to so many more people being able to get into wrestling now compared to when he and Anderson broke in.
Marty talks about how years ago wrestlers would try to put people off wanting to train to be a wrestler by making their first few days hell. Anderson chips in on that and how he and Daivari don’t live by that mantra at their wrestling school.
EC3
Ethan Carter begins his segment by pointing out a guy in a leather jacket who was asleep during the Ken Anderson interview.
Ethan, Colt, and Marty waste no time in ripping the owl logo that’s been introduced since Anthem bought Impact Wrestling.
Carter tells Colt and Marty about a real life owl being brought backstage by Impact Wrestling and that he’s jealous of it because it’s the closing shot of the opening to their weekly show.
Colt then brings up the contest Anthem ran to name the owl and Carter says it was pushed back because the only suggestions were Reby and Dixie.
Colt then lists the times he was an extra at WrestleMania and asks if Ethan ever had one of those moments. He never did but was once on the D-list for Axxess.
Marty then steers the conversation onto Ethan’s time as a part of NXT: Redemption. They both talk about the stuff he was doing with Daniel Bryan and The Bellas and how nobody of note backstage probably even realized he was doing anything.
Carter agrees and laughs at first but then talks about the one time Vince did take an interest in him when Carter came up with a Mark Henry inspired cologne called World’s Strongest Sweat. Apparently, Vince became so obsessed with it that he took the project over and Carter was forgotten about.
Colt asks what other skits Carter came up with in WWE and he remembers one where he and Daniel Bryan were buddy cops.
DeRosa asks if Ethan is a big deal in India because of Impact’s presence over there, and he says yes he gets recognized a lot more in India than in the United States.
They all then talk about how there is hopefully good change in place at TNA and Impact Wrestling.
Cryme Tyme
Colt then introduces his final guests, Cryme Tyme, something he’s slightly confused about as it was only supposed to be one of them.
They begin by talking about JTG’s tell-all books about his time in the wrestling business.
Shad Gaspard talks about a lot being left out of the books, and Colt asks JTG exactly what it is that he had to leave him out.
Shad talks about a time he punched someone while at WWE and claimed he did it because someone had first hit JTG, who then got the blame for not being able to defend himself.
Gaspard tells Colt how wrestlers would take liberties with JTG because he was only 21 when he broke into the business.
He then talks about a time when Colt was told he needed to lose weight while in WWE, but Cabana corrects him and says that was back when he was playing football.
DeRosa has read JTG’s book and asks about how often he would piss people off in the locker room and if anyone got in touch after he released the book to question him about anything. JTG then tells the story of Big Show calling him and getting mad because he thought everything was okay between them, and he has to diffuse the situation by saying that it was and that he just wanted to tell the truth in his book.
Colt asks about the thinking behind his book and he just says he wanted to keep it real and that friends and family told him to write the book after all the stories he would tell them about his time on the road. He means it all as comedy and didn’t mean it to come across as bitter like a lot of fans sometimes think.
Marty asks the two of them what would they tell themselves if they could go back in time to when they first started wrestling, and they both say they wouldn’t change anything.
Colt asks who sang their WWE entrance theme, and they say they don’t know and they don’t like it. They recall having to pretend to like it when Vince called them in to listen to it.
Once Cryme Tyme leave the stage, Colt closes the show by thanking his co-host Marty and throwing back to his studio apartment for some plugs and upcoming events.
Review (6.5)
A throwback to Colt Cabana’s shows at this year’s WrestleCon for the second week in a row and a show that’s always going to be relatively strong with the sheer amount of guests Colt manages to cram into the space of an hour. Great stuff from most of the wrestlers that popped in, in particular, Mr. Anderson whose WrestleMania recollections were a personal highlight for me. Last week Colt regretted not cutting out Konnan and I disagreed, this week Marty Jannetty was the questionable guest and I really think he added very little to this and Cabana was right in being on the fence about keeping his content in. Other than that it was another strong live show, just not quite up to par with the guests and the content featured during last week’s edition.
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 WrestleCon episode of Colt Cabana’s “The Art of Wrestling.”
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