Colt Cabana was revealed as ROH World Champion Chris Jericho’s surprise opponent earlier this month on an AEW Dynamite episode, marking Cabana’s first on Dynamite in almost a year. The fan-favorite star came up short in challenging Jericho for the title.
While speaking on his Art of Wrestling podcast, Cabana opened up on how a situation unfolded during the match that could have taken his life.
“A couple of weeks ago, I wrestled Chris Jericho. I wanted to share the story of how I almost died wrestling Chris Jericho. I’m not telling this story to make an excuse, nobody would have known, everyone complimented me on my match and I’m appreciative for that. It’s a fun story and in 20 years I will laugh about it. In the moment, I did not laugh.”
Cabana stated that he usually wears normal socks as part of his outfit, but for this match, he bought compression socks for the bout, which he had a lot of emotions about because it was a big match against a big name.
“As I go to wrestle Jericho, I put on my compression socks, kneepads, and boots. What I don’t realize is that I have essentially made a tourniquet in the bottom half of my body. My blood flow is perfect, so essentially what I did was restrict everything. I remember vividly thinking, ‘I can’t feel my legs. I guess it’s just the nerves. It was nerves and anxiety, but it was also compression socks.”
He continued by noting that this caused him high blood pressure and low oxygen, but he gutted his way through it. When he returned to the trainer’s room, he couldn’t move, then started not to be able to breathe and had a headache.
“The eyes of the trainers were like, ‘what?’ I was asked to lay back for the next two hours while ice was put all over my body. I was educated as to why you should not professionally wrestle in front of 10,000 people and almost a million people at home in compression socks.”
This marked Cabana’s first match on Dynamite in several months and despite the rumors, AEW President Tony Khan has dismissed the speculation that CM Punk had anything to do with Cabana’s status with AEW nor him being moved to ROH. You can listen to the podcast below:
H/T to Fightful for the transcription
