Colt Cabana’s The Art of Wrestling is ‘coming to an end’

Yesterday (July 18), Colt Cabana put out an announcement on his various online channels...

The Art of Wrestling, the podcast Cabana’s been doing since 2010, is “coming to an end”.

It’s not exactly an abrupt end, or a hard and fast one. Colt’s in Scotland now doing some live shows, and he’s scheduled at Starrcast III next month. The All Out weekend gig in Chicagoland will probably be his last official weekly episode of AOW, but advertising commitments mean he’s producing new monthly episodes through the end of 2019. Cabana is also setting up a Patreon where subscribers will get access to his archive of nine-plus years worth of shows, and there will likely be a tier and subscriber-level which will get new material.

He also left the door open to returning to podcasting, but says for now, he wants to “take a breath” and enjoy the wrestling events he works without the pressure of creating content for AOW.

Still, even with this being “never say never” like most wrestling retirements, it’s a good time to reflect on the impact The Art of Wrestling had on the business. The exposure Cabana gave to independent wrestlers and promotions undoubtedly fueled the rise of the indies, and helped a lot of performers get on the radar of WWE, Ring of Honor, Impact, New Japan, and now All Elite.

The podcast boom would have come to wrestling eventually, but Cabana was a pioneer in our corner of the pop culture world. It’s possible his success led people in other genres and niches to start their own shows, and that AOW helped the entertainment industry realize there was demand for and money in pro wrestling.

And then there was a little episode he released in November of 2014, which shook WWE, ended a friendship, and the fallout of which is still being litigated in Illinois courts.

So even if this isn’t the end, it was a heck of a run for The Art of Wrestling.

Thanks, Colt.