Colt Cabana has discussed combining his role as a wrestler with being a coach for All Elite Wrestling and says he wants to nurture confidence in his fellow stars.
Dark Order’s Cabana was talking on the ‘My Mom’s Basement’ podcast about his dual role in the company. Cabana joins fellow coaches Dean Malenko, Jerry Lynn, and BJ Whitmer in providing feedback to wrestlers. The subject turned to fellow coach Jerry Lynn, and Cabana revealed that the coaches are happy to learn from each other.
Colt Cabana explained:
“What’s fun for me is that I’m both a coach and a wrestler in AEW, Jerry hasn’t been my coach many times, but we’ll sit back and give notes together as coaches. Something that was very cool; Jerry was watching me give notes to the wrestlers. And he took me back and he was like, ‘Wow I didn’t even think about that. That’s a great note! I wouldn’t have thought to do that in that situation.’ To hear a guy like Jerry Lynn step back and say I’m still learning 30, 35 years in this business is pretty cool.”
Cabana emphasised the importance of having a constructive dialogue with performers. Cabana noted that his bad experiences with coaches informs his own approach to the role:
“I think it’s great we have coaches like that that are chill. I’ve had wrestlers afterward come up to me and say, ‘I wasn’t scared to come back and get notes from you and get critiqued.’ I’ve been in that situation. I’m not looking to yell at anybody; I just want to make sure everyone becomes the best wrestler they can be. And Jerry Lynn is very much like that, so I love working with him.”
“I’ve had bad coaches. I think leadership is so important. And it’s, you know people don’t coach how to coach. I think you have to take the experiences. It goes one of two ways. It’s like, either you get drilled so hard you become that a**hole because that’s what you know. Or you say to yourself ‘I’ve had really bad coaches and I don’t like the way that feels. And I don’t want to put that onto anyone else.’”
“So I like when wrestlers are expecting to get yelled at, because that’s the culture, and I like the idea that I can help nurture. I like to bring wrestlers up and say ‘Yeah, maybe I didn’t like that. But why don’t we explore that or do something else?’ Almost nurturing confidence. As a wrestler it’s art; it’s subjective. It’s not objective; you need to be able to do everything and figure it out. And if coaches narrow it down and don’t let wrestlers figure it out, wrestlers will never become the stars they become.”
As far as the future, Colt Cabana says that as well as coaching, he wants to try every role available to him in AEW:
“I want to do everything. People know I can commentate and podcast. It’s almost like I don’t want to sink myself into one thing. Because that’s what happened; I sunk my whole life into one thing and then I got fired. So I’ve always had these buckets and baskets so if one goes down I have other stuff to do.”