Another in our weekly series of reviews covering RING OF HONOR DEE-VEE-DEEZ! For more information visit www.ROHWrestling.com and don't forget to buy a few DVD's of your own while there. This week in honor of Colt Cabana's last appearance for Ring of Honor we're reviewing "Straight Shootin' With CM Punk + Colt Cabana," filmed July 1st, 2005. The irony of the fact both of these men are now employed by WWE is not lost on me in the least. Let's get down to shootin'!
As we open the men are sitting side by side, Cabana on the left and Punk on the right Punk is looking through a stack of photos reminiscing about old times as Cabana looks over to see what they are. Punk & Cabana try to remember where they first met; Cabana says he was training at the Domain, and Punk says he was training with them in October of '98 and was doing shows even before he got there, "fuckin backyard crap" in his own words. He says he hurt his back and had to take a couple of months off, and when he came back Cabana was already there. Cabana says he had already seen him though, and Cabana reminisces that he'd drive and be two hours early for training because if he left and hit traffic he'd end up ten minutes late instead. He'd sit outside to wait and he saw Punk out there, "scrangly tattoos and really dirty looking" and that's how he knew he was a wrestler. Then he noticed Punk had a really hot looking college girl on his arm, and Cabana thought "This is how you gotta look to get these kind of girls." Punk: "So your first impression of me is I'm dirty but I get hot girls." Cabana: "That's the way it's gotta be!" Punk: "That's pretty accurate." Cabana: "Not dirty like in a bath sense." Punk: "But let's be honest." Cabana: "Later I learned that but at that point it was just punk rock, tattoos, he didn't give a shit he was from an alley on the Southside of Chicago." Punk remembers Cabana wearing a Doug Collins basketball camp shirt at every practice, and it was April '99 when they really got to know each other. Cabana was surprised when he got into wrestling coming out of football, thinking everybody'd be ripped, and instead it was "full of fat guys and old people." As such Cabana clicked naturally with Punk because they were both in shape and both knew wrestling and cared enough about it to be in shape.
Punk: "Everybody was into it because of the nWo or Steve Austin, when I was saying Roddy Piper, and he was saying Don Muraco, and at that time we were about as old school as you could get and everybody else was just in it because of the wrestling boom." They reminisce about Brutal Brad, who is also now with WWE and working in developmental as Bradley Jay. (He's also done jobs in a few WWE dark matches.) Punk starts laughing about the fact Brad started a week before he did, but apparently Brad didn't come along as fast because he had thyroid problems. Punk says he actually fell asleep on the apron during a tag match - he went for the tag and the kid was leaning on the turnbuckle SNORING. Cabana says he was wrestling a local legend named Tough Tom in Wisconsin, and he was so excited about it, Tom got the heat on him and he rolled out and Brad rolled in, Tom scooped up Brad and gave him a powerslam and a pin. They had about 8 minutes to go in the match but Brad didn't kick out before 3 and Cabana never got back in - Brad fell asleep during the pin! Punk says this is one of those stories that might not be as funny to us as it is to them, but the visual of a guy being pinned because he fell asleep is actually pretty damn funny to me! Punk says you just have to understand this was Cabana's second match ever, Tom was a WCW guy, and Cabana's dreams of learning all about wrestling were totally ruined. Punk: "You think we haven't paid dues, I wish we had videotaped a lot of the stuff we went through. We'd go to the Domain, block traffic in Irving Park for an hour and a half, load the ring, drive to White Water, set it up, wrestle a match, tear it down, and drive it back to the Domain." THE ROAD WILL OWN YOU.
A lot of their stories revolve around NAWF out of Whitewater, Wisconsin; in fact if you look on NAWF's website they sell a CM Punk + Colt Cabana DVD of their own promising matches you won't see anywhere else - I wonder if some of their ones with Bad Brad and Tough Tom would be on it. The owner of the promotion is a wrestler by the name of Rockin' Randy, who either has a Canadian or very Northern Minnesota accent (think of the movie "Fargo" and you'll know what I mean). At one point he blows out his knee giving Punk a Vader Bomb from the second rope and Punk actually heard it pop, and Randy just calmly told him "Eeee, I blew out my knee, this is the finish eeee." Punk let him get the 3 and then felt really bad because he rolled out and Randy was still laying there, and he says the worst part was Randy couldn't blame anybody but himself because he couldn't claim it was somebody else's ring with shitty ropes. They go back to stories of how they'd be friends, and how they were both friends with Ace Steel and Danny Dominion. Punk: "Me and you if we had gone to high school, we'd have probably hated each other." Cabana: "I was the jock football player." Punk: "We met because of wrestling though so I didn't see him as the jock kid where I probably would have in high school, I just saw him as somebody who loved wrestling as much as I did." Punk remembers he was too nervous to get his own bookings, so either Randy would go "Eeee, you're booked" or Ace and Danny would say "Come with us, you're booked." Punk remembers working a show in Racine when he was a rookie and how he looked scruffy and untanned while his partner looked like Ricky Steamboat, and he was playing a babyface and the crowd didn't buy it. One big hillbilly in overalls was screaming at Punk that he sucked, and Punk is trying to slap hands and pump up the crowd so he can't yell back, and when he turns to look at the guy yelling at him the heckler's glass eyeball falls out. He calmly picked it up, blew the dust off, popped it back in and started yelling "YOU SUCK" at him all over again - and Punk was just weirded out the rest of the match. Ahh the joys of indie wrestling! I don't want to spoil all of the stories but Punk worked security at an event and dispatch a drunk fan with such venom Randy loved him for life. "EEEE, YOU'RE A SCRAPPER!"
Cabana and Punk pull out the photos and start showing them to the camera, and one of Cabana's pictures is "him and a buddy from college" - the buddy turns out to be none other than Tough Enough 3 winner Matt Cappotelli. Funny how that 6 degrees of seperation thing only turns out to be 1 or 2 degrees in pro wrestling. There's one of Punk and Cabana with Harley Race as the referee where Punk claims he looks like shit but he'd look worse than that if he had an older photo. Punk: "Harley gets so blitzed at the afterparty, I have to give him a ride to the hotel - I'm like yeah no problem it's Harley Race. Ace is in the backseat, Harley's riding shotgun." The funny part is that Punk is driving a brand new Monte Carlo, so as Race throws up in his mouth and then spits it out the window Punk is freaking out and wants to pull over. Race chokes down a mouthful of vomit as he tries Race says "Keep going we don't want to alert the authorities." Race was apologetic afterwards because about 90% of it went out of the car and 10% was in, but Punk was like "hey no problem" because who's not going to accept an apology from the legendary Harley Race. Punk has a great story about taking it to the carwash afterwards. They got on local TV, started to get a name, and reminisce about the fact that Shawn Daivari used to put up the ring and then look up to them - but they thought he was in Cabana's words "a little pube." Of course Daivari turned out to be a great wrestler later on but they had no idea at a time, and there's a million guys they can tell stories about like that.
AngryMarks.com will be back later with the second half of this review!