8 Wrestlers Who Saved Their WWE Careers (By Being Awesome At Something Else)
2. Colt Cabana - Comedy
Colt Cabana was always a very gifted, and very underrated pro wrestler, but his style and disposition never really lent itself to the role of Ace in a super-Indy promotion in an era where technicality and workrate was valued above all else.
His humour, charisma and size rendered him much more of a WWE guy, but WWE rendered him more of a punchline than a comedian through his drastically bad and fairly problematic presentation as 'Scotty Goldman'. For whatever reason - institutional awfulness, most likely - WWE loathed one of the industry's most likeable players.
During that time, most if not all WWE rejects opted for the route of bitter defiance - they wasted me up north brother, etc. etc. - but Cabana subverted that cliché gloriously by conceiving of his 'Creative Has Nothing For You' web series. In it, he with Marty DeRosa used the catharsis of comedy to satirise WWE's rotten, ignorant and only perversely amusing writing staff. It was tremendous, and Cabana used this new relevance as a platform to build an influential empire of sorts by pioneering the pro wrestling podcast industry.
WWE killed Colt Cabana's chances of real mainstream money, but he made his own with chef's kiss gallows humour.