Colt Cabana And The Art Of Comedy Wrestling

There are still corners of the pro-wrestling world in which – whisper it – ‘comedy wrestling’ is a dirty word. The recent furore over not-quite-dead Joey Ryan’s ‘d*ck druids’ marching down the ramp at ALL IN is proof that there is a subsection of wrestling fandom which cannot reconcile with the notion that to embrace the ridiculous is one of the great joys of the violent pantomime we call pro-wrestling.

It’s a realisation I came to myself last week, and I have Colt Cabana to thank for opening my eyes to the joy of comedy wrestling.

I hesitated, initially, to describe Colt Cabana as a ‘comedy wrestler’. It feels like a limiting term – of course, he is much more than just an in-ring comedian, but wrestling contains multitudes, and all the best wrestlers are as much masters of theatre as they are physical spectacle. The sublime physical comedy and sheer warmth of El Generico was drawn from the same well as the babyface fire and bloody-minded determination of Sami Zayn, and his further incarnation as the smug, self-aggrandizing, aggressively-skanking heel just prior to his leave of absence due to injury.

It’s no insult to the memory of El Generico to speak of him as a comedian and to note that his appeal was born from the unholy union of insane in-ring aptitude and the pure joy of his character. Make no mistake: it was these traits in tandem that made El Generico so special.

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Back to Colt Cabana – last Wednesday and Thursday marked the first ever television tapings for British promotion Revolution Pro Wrestling. Colt Cabana wrestled on both nights, and while I had expected to enjoy his matches, I didn’t anticipate what an absolute treat they would turn out to be. From melodramatic handshakes and whip-quick verbal responses to a fully engaged crowd, right down to the moment in which Cabana paused the action to mime sewing up a tear in the ring canvas, to great applause. Each match felt like a well-oiled exercise in seeking those moments of crowd reaction and stoking the flames.

Cabana is excellent at what he does. The moments he chooses are inevitably timed to perfection, never too much nor too little. He has an innate sense of when to perform and when to feed the crowd. It’s an elaborate call-and-response in which Cabana actively tears down the fourth wall so that the crowd may not just respond, but become active participants.  It’s not an overstatement to say that Cabana is a master of his art.

Crowd response is vital to pro-wrestling. When a heel does something reprehensible, we boo. When a face is in peril, we cheer and clap, as though we might lend them our energy through sheer osmosis. It’s part of the deal we broker when we choose to engage with the theatre that is pro wrestling: the wrestlers perform, the crowd reacts. It’s a necessary symbiosis akin to pantomime, which requires an active response in order to succeed. Pro-wrestling is not an art form which thrives under a passive audience.

Yet, there is an undercurrent of shame in accepting the pantomime nature of pro-wrestling, as though it is ‘low art’, and therefore something shameful and embarrassing. There are those who seek to view it solely in terms of sport – a valid interpretation, but one which fails to capture the soul of pro-wrestling.

An art form in which audience participation is built into the very foundations of its design requires that we view it not solely as competition, or as mere feats of physical strength and endurance, but as the intersection between sport and theatre. (“Wrestling is not a sport,” wrote Roland Barthes, “it is a spectacle.”)

Why have storylines at all, if the point of pro-wrestling isn’t to provoke an emotional response? Why create characters and assign them ‘good’ and ‘bad’ traits if we’re not to derive meaning from it? Stables and tag teams exist to create tension, both negative and positive: the heartbreak of betrayal (thanks, Ciampa and Gargano), the life-affirming happiness of a long-awaited reunion (Milano AT Collection gets it).

The point of pro-wrestling is to make you feel, whether that manifests in gleefully booing the bad guy, desperately entreating the good guy to do the right thing, or even watching in awe as two individuals destroy each other – elaborately, acrobatically, or straight-up demolition. Pro-wrestling without drama is a hollow thing.

There is a place here, too, for simple joy. Just as drama is art, so too is comedy. It’s not easy to make someone laugh – genuinely laugh, not just out of politeness. It’s even harder to make a room full of people laugh, especially in the world of pro-wrestling, which is designed to engender a para-social dynamic between performer and fan.

Modern-day WWE is a particularly egregious example of this: the notion of a ‘WWE Universe’ turns the crowd from a collection of individuals into something homogenous, speaking and reacting with a single voice. Those moments in which a wrestler acknowledges an individual fan – for example, when Tetsuya Naito pauses to fistbump a young fan – are a form of transgression, deliberately traversing the boundaries between the kayfabe world (in which the crowd exists merely as a kind of Greek chorus) and the ‘real’ one.

Comedy wrestling embraces this transgression, and that may be why it provokes such ire. When a particular individual (who shall remain unnamed) launches into his ‘exposing the business’ invective, it’s a position based on the sanctity of the orthodox wrestler-fan relationship.

To acknowledge the necessity of the crowd in breathing life into the characters and stories that populate the imaginary universe of pro-wrestling is to take a sledgehammer to kayfabe. It’s admitting that the fairies at the bottom of the garden are made out of paper and glitter. That a wrestler ultimately has no power except that which the crowd affords him.

Watching Colt Cabana command a hall full of fans – tired, ragged fans, on their second consecutive long, relentless night of wrestling – I couldn’t help but be amazed by his ability to weave laughter into the fabric of his match, making it as integral to his performance as dramatic tension is to the Gargano/Ciampa story.

What’s truly remarkable is that he does not suffer from exposure without the veil of kayfabe to protect him. We know the fairies at the bottom of the garden are imaginary, that the punches are pulled, that the finish is predetermined, and none of that matters because in this instance, we’re not there for the drama of it. We’re there only for the joy. Watch Colt Cabana vs Toru Yano and tell me it’s not ten minutes of pure fun.

Comedy wrestling is art within art. When Joey Ryan ‘returns from the dead’ amidst a ‘phalanx of phalluses’ (thank you, Excalibur), or when Dalton Castle theatrically begs Cabana to spare his Boys, it requires an implicit acceptance of the role of the audience to properly work. Cabana’s decision to destroy the Boys anyway is made with the outrage of the audience in mind. Ryan’s resurrection cannot happen unless the audience is willing to step beyond kayfabe, into the realm of the sublimely ridiculous, and the point of it is this: it’s fun. Pro-wrestling that makes you smile is every bit as worthy as pro-wrestling that makes you feel, or reel with amazement.

It’s not that Cabana isn’t an accomplished wrestler without comedy – he’s every bit as technically proficient in the ring as you’d expect from someone so widely known and respected, but as with Tommaso Ciampa’s ability to provoke pure heel heat, and Hiroshi Tanahashi’s ability to command adoration and respect, Colt Cabana’s ability to make the crowd forget themselves at just the right moment – to let go and smile – is what elevates him from being just a ‘good wrestler’. It’s what makes him a star.