Colt Cabana says he had a close call when he recently challenged Chris Jericho for the ROH World Championship.
During the newest episode of his Art of Wrestling podcast, Colt Cabana discussed his recent match against Chris Jericho on the November 2 episode of Dynamite. Cabana said that he nearly died during the match because he wore compression socks that cut off the bloodflow to his legs.
“A couple of weeks ago, I wrestled Chris Jericho, and 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 even known. Everyone complimented me on my match, and I’m appreciative for that. But this is just a fun story. In 20 years, I will laugh about it. In the moment, I did not laugh about it. I guess a couple weeks afterwards, I can laugh about it. In my laundry room is my wrestling gear. I’ll wash my knee pads, I’ll wash my singlet. I don’t dry them, though,” Cabana explained, “[I] just wash them, hang dry them, and of course I wash my wrestling socks. Now I’m sure those of you with a washer/dryer in your home know about the case of the disappearing socks. Well, I don’t know where my wrestling socks went. They went somewhere, and with me, I like long black soccer socks, long wrestling socks so there isn’t a gap between my boots and my knee pads. I don’t want just hairy skin, so I like the king soccer socks because it fills in that space.
“So before I was going to wrestle Chris Jericho, I had to go out and buy a new pair of socks, and of course I procrastinated, so I waited til the night before. I went over to Target, I asked where the soccer section was, and I looked for the soccer socks,” Cabana noted.
“I went over there, and they only had long black socks for the kids. So my next move was I guess going to the men’s sock section, and as I make my way over there, I do see a pair of long socks. Now, these socks are called compression socks, which I kind of know what they are, but not really. That’s fine, they’ll fit, and I’ll wear them under my boots and my knee pads. So I do, and I wrestle against Chris Jericho. Now of course, that match, there were many emotions. There was a lot of tension going into it. My anxiety was high, tensions were high, the building was hot. So as I go to wrestle Jericho, I put on my compression socks, my knee pads and my boots,” Cabana said. “What I don’t realize is that I have essentially just made a tourniquet for the bottom half of my body.”
Compression socks are designed to increase circulation and prevent blood clots. Colt Cabana said that he remembers noticing he couldn’t feel his legs but chalked it up to being nervous for the match.
“By the time I did that moonsault to the outside and had to run myself into the ring to go give Chris Jericho a flying asshole, I had absolutely nothing left in my body, and I just attributed that to the night of wrestling. But no, it was because I literally had cut off the supply of blood to my own legs, causing high blood pressure and low, low oxygen. I knew I was on live TV, I knew I was in front of a giant crowd, I knew it was a big moment for me,” Cabana explained. “So I figured a way to do it to Jericho, knowing the match would come to an end very quickly. It did.
“I for some reason could not move, and as I make my way back to the trainer’s to room, asking for electrolytes abs the trainer’s being like, ‘We’re not sure what’s going on’, and me just saying, ‘I’ve got to get this stuff off of me, I feel so compacted.’ I ripped my singlet off and it still didn’t feel like enough, and I couldn’t breathe and I felt lightheaded, and I had a headache and my head was pounding. Then I’m just like, ‘Ah, can you take my boots off?’ I felt like such a schmuck asking a grown man to take my boots off, but the trainer was like, ‘No, of course, that’s my job.’ He rips my boots off. Then I’m like, ‘Can you take my knee pads?’ I just feel so constricted. He takes my knee pads off, and then I’m like, ‘Can we get my socks off?’ I say, ‘I bought these compression socks last month,’ and then the eyes of the trainers are just like, ‘What?’ As I was asked to lay back for the next two hours while ice was just out 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.”
Read More: Tony Khan Says CM Punk Never Asked For Colt Cabana To Be Moved To ROH
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