Jeff Cobb (@jeffcobb) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE and NJPW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas to discuss being released by WWE, why he signed with WWE after previously turning them down, being a part of the MFTs and wearing face paint, representing Guam in the Olympic Games, being Matanza Cueto in Lucha Underground, why he returned to New Japan, wrestling Will Ospreay, and more!
How does it feel being Jeff Cobb again?
“It feels great, man. I mean, I was Jeff Cobb there, but just with a different name, I guess.”
You were Jeff Cobb when you debuted in WWE
“Thank you, Michael Cole. For that brief moment, the Jeff Cobb name was on the WWE PLE.”
So, was the plan for you to be Jeff Cobb in WWE?
“Yes and no. Originally, I didn’t hear anything for a while, so I was like all right, this is cool. I’m gonna keep Jeff Cobb.”
Which is your real name, by the way?
“Yeah. Well, actually it’s Jeffrey, but only my mom says that, and government people who call me if you go for an ID renewal. Originally I was like, oh, this is gonna be great, Jeff Cobb’s gonna be on WWE TV, and I thought it was good until about, I want to say a week, a week and a half before I started getting the text message about, ‘Hey have you thought of a new name?’ I was like oh man. I was trying to ignore it, put it off and hopefully they just forgot about it. So I kind of came up with a couple of different ideas. I wanted to keep Cobb because I was like, dude, this is dope. I don’t think there’s been a Cobb in WWE. I mean, there’s been quite a few famous Jeffs in here, like Jeff Jarrett, Jeff Hardy…”
Did you come up with JC Mateo?
“I did not.”
But JC, it makes sense, right?
“It was great because a bunch of my singlets had the giant JC on the front. I don’t have to buy new singlets. This is great. The day that I flew into St. Louis, well, actually the day of the PLE, Backlash, I went backstage and met everybody, met the writers, and then they gave me two pages of names. I haven’t released them yet, but I think it’s pretty funny. At that time I was like what the hell? The first page, I’ll say it was maybe 60 names on there. I was like okay, this is pretty cool, pretty cool. They’re trying to go into my background with Guam, my background in Hawaii. I was like, okay. Second page, I don’t know what happened. It just started doing random names. I was like, How are they choosing this? One that stuck out made me giggle because it was all caps, JONAH.”
That’s already been done.
“Yeah, by Bronson Reed. The guy that’s in your company. I was like, wait a minute, are you guys even trying now? This is why I really like Drew. After I narrowed it down, I chose the name out of the sheets. I was like, ‘Hey, can I have a copy of this?’ They’re like, why? I was like, ‘Well, I just want to keep it for mementos because I like collecting random, silly things.’ So I brought the list back to the locker room, and Drew was like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ I was like, ‘Oh, this is my list of names.’ He’s like, ‘Can I see this?’ Yeah, sure. He looked at them, he’s on the second page. He saw one. He’s like, ‘I like this one.’ I was like, ‘Well, we’re not using that.’ He signed it, so it’s a Drew McIntyre authentic signature, which I’m not gonna sell because it’s funny, but it was Jafar Smash. I said, ‘What?’ So every time I saw Drew without hesitation I was like, ‘What’s up, Drew?’ He’s like, ‘What’s up, Jafar?’ I was like wait, Jafar is neither a Polynesian name, a Hawaiian name, nor a Guam name. I don’t know where that came from.”
I don’t know what the lineage of Smash is?
“I don’t know, but Drew loved that one. So yeah, this is awesome. I’m gonna put it up on the internet one day. Just the different names.”
You had turned WWE down a few times before, and you finally said yes in 2025. What made you say yes then?
“I just felt like I kind of hit a plateau in New Japan, and they’ve always been great to me. So I always give them props, and that’s one of the reasons why I went back because they have always been good to me, but I don’t know. I felt like it was weird because when I did the try-out in 2014. At that moment, if you look at the roster, they were collecting like one of everything. So they had a Hawaiian guy, Noah Kekoa [Kona Reeves], was on there, and then they had an Olympic [athlete], Chad Gable was already still in NXT at the time. So they had one Olympian already. They had one Hawaiian guy already. Fast forward a couple years later, there’s like five guys from China, five guys from India. So yeah, at the time I was like, it’s weird. They actually want me. Then I remember having a phone call with Mr. Regal and he was like, ‘Hunter wants you, Hunter wants you.’ I was like this can’t be true. Then he said, ‘Yeah I want to set you up with a meeting with him.’ I was like this can’t be true either. Then it was like a Zoom call with Hunter. I was like okay maybe this could be true. Then it’s like, yeah you’re not getting any younger. It could be now or never. And at the same time, I was like, okay, if they didn’t want me in 2014, I was like, I’m a little more than 10 years older now, and then this could be my last chance to go. So, and it’s always been like, say what you want. But when I was growing up as a kid, WWF is what got me into wrestling. Seeing Hulk Hogan on TV was a larger-than-life superstar. Because of Hulk Hogan, I was hooked. That’s where I’ve always wanted to work, was WWE.”
So when were the previous offers? When did they ask you to be part of it, and you said no?
“The first time was when I made my AEW Dynamite debut when I just came and beat up Jon Moxley, and the very next day I started getting phone calls like, ‘Are you available?’ I told you this every November, ‘Hey, January is usually when I’m free. But I already committed to New Japan.’ So I just told them, ‘Hey, listen, I had signed a deal with New Japan for a year because they usually only do one-year deals.’ So yeah, I said, ‘Well, I’d sign for a year,’ and then the pandemic hit. So I just said no, and that was the first time. Was February 2020, I believe.”
There was a lot of excitement when you debuted. I feel like there was a lot of buzz around you. Did you also see the comparisons to Rhino?
“Oh yeah, even on the Indies before WWE, it’s like, ‘Oh, is that Rhino’s Kid?’ I did get a couple. Rhino was like the most compared one, the other one was Bronson Reed, and then another one in a distant third, but it was still mentioned, was Bo Dallas.”
How’d you get put with the MFTs? What was the pitch?
“Well, my strong family lineage, right? I didn’t even know that was the pitch to begin with because I heard a couple other rumors out there as well. I mean, just rumors from fans fantasy booking that I was like, oh, they’re gonna put you with Bronson Reed and be like the new Natural Disasters. I was like, oh man, so it would be like tsunami and volcano or something?”
Were you told what MFT stood for because fans had their own ideas and probably still do to this day?
“Well, eventually we were backstage, it was My Family Tree, and I was like, okay. But then I was like, dude, you know what? The internet fans are very meticulous. They’ll be like, ‘He’s not even part of the family tree.’ I was like, well, the roots can go super far away to like Micronesia, Polynesia. Yeah, my brother’s cousin’s third uncle’s aunt. I mean, that’s like the regular Samoan tree, anyways. Because I sat down one time with Jacob, ‘Hey, man, explain this. Can you help me with your family?’ He had a hard time, and this was pretty funny. So I’m like, oh man. I saw Zilla trying to answer that too.”
How’d you get along with those guys?
“It was great. I knew Tama. Well, I know him as T, and Tonga Loa and Hikuleo from New Japan days. Solo, I feel like I met him at least once or twice before, just messing around at FSW. But I knew his dad more than him, so it was cool. So Rikishi, because I worked for him a few times down at KnokX Pro. So yeah, and then Solo was so cool, man. He was very open. Tama and T were hurt, and Hikuleo was still in NXT, or just he was in NXT, but not on TV on there. So, it was just me, Jacob, and Solo. So, and that was pretty cool. So I got to know him. He’s super cool.”
You debuted without face paint. At what point did they say, ‘Hey, if you’re gonna be part of the group, you gotta wear face paint.’
“I want to say they all sat us down. It’s like, ‘We gotta make you more vicious. So we’re gonna go with face paint like you guys had in New Japan.’ I remember sitting there like that wasn’t me. I didn’t have face paint in Japan. That was those guys over there. They’re like, oh, it’s okay, it’s okay. I was like, you do realize I never even teamed with them in Japan. I was fighting against them; they were in Bullet Club. I can’t be friends with them. So yeah, they were like we’re gonna put your face paint. I was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be rough. I don’t know what Ultimate Warrior used for his face paint, or Sting. So I was like, this is like learning on the fly. I just bought a whole bunch of random things.”
You guys weren’t using the same stuff?
“No. I was originally getting the stuff from Target.”
Do you regret signing with WWE?
“Not at all, not at all. I just feel like you can’t stay in one place the whole time, and so I wanted to test it out. Because I did AEW, I’ve been at New Japan for a while. WWE is a totally different thing. So I wanted to try that and see. You never know until you try, and I don’t want to be 10 years down the line and be like oh man I could have been [big]. I could have went there. I don’t want to be that could have, should have, would have guy.”
I don’t think your amateur background gets talked about nearly enough. You were an Olympic wrestler; you wrestled at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
“Yeah, many moons ago, though.”
But people still talk about obviously Kurt Angle, right? And they talk about Chad Gable and Otis, this doesn’t get talked about. I don’t think enough.
“Yeah, because I didn’t wrestle for the United States, so that’s probably why.”
You wrestled for Guam?
“Yeah, I was also a flag bearer.”
You wrestled Yoel Romero, right? He ended up going on to have this great career in UFC.
“Yeah, he’s awesome. I think he’s one of those T-1000s because whenever I wrestled him, someone said he was like 45. I was like, no way, he can’t be 45. But I think he was in his late 20s, early 30s, and he was just so jacked. At the time, I was wrestling at the 84-kilogram class, which is 184.6, I believe. This dude does not look 184 pounds. He was just jacked and solid, and he was like six-one. Are you sure there’s weight classes here? Then, flash forward, he’s in his 40s, fighting in the UFC, beating people up, insane.”
Was there a match in New Japan that you feel like oh, I’ve got it now! I’ve figured out who I am and what I’m all about.
“This is my first time at the Tokyo Dome against Shingo Takagi. It’s a little bittersweet because that was my first singles match in the Tokyo Dome, but it was during the height of the pandemic, so I think it could only be 30% capacity or something like that, but I wanted to use that as a proving point for me personally, and that was one of my better matches, one of my favorite matches.”
When you got let go from WWE, did you immediately know all right, I’m going back to Japan.
“A part of me, yes, but then a part of me was kind of like, I don’t really like wrestling anymore.”
Really?
“Yeah. So May was rough. I didn’t work out. I didn’t do anything. I was just like, I didn’t like wrestling. The first time I have ever been like that, where I was like, man, what the hell? I’m not blaming WWE.”
What do you think that’s from?
“I mean, you know, us as wrestlers, we’re kind of our biggest critics. If I do a match or something, and I come back and say, oh, that was good, and I was like, we could have done this a little bit better, whatnot. So, we’re always our harshest critic, right? So, I mean, I don’t know if that’s the same in your world.”
Were you thinking about retiring?
“Yeah, I was like, man, was that it? But then at the same time, I was like, I don’t want to really end on that note. So, I kicked out.”
What brought you back around?
“Honestly, watching some New Japan stuff kind of got me. I was like oh, this is good. This is good. Then I was like, maybe I have some unfinished business here. So I start thinking about it more and more. Then honestly, G1 season always gets me hyped because New Japan always puts out before the shows, especially the G1 history, and that always gets you so hyped. Video packages that can tug at your heartstrings. Dude, this is dope. I was like, you know what? I got to be on this one day. I got to be on the G1 package. Then the only way to do it is to go back to New Japan.”
What makes Will Ospreay so good?
“Oh man, it’s everything that he does. Everybody’s gonna have the critics, right? Everybody’s gonna say, oh, he does too much. He does too much of this. He no-sells this or whatever. But like, he puts it in the right places.”
I’ve said this to Will, but it’s crazy with the way that the internet wrestling community is. He’s either the best wrestler in the world or the worst wrestler in the world.
“Yeah, and then again, that just goes back to people having opinions, and that’s totally fine. But I’ve been in the ring with him multiple times, and I never have to worry about him because I know he’s going to be there for something, and he says it’s the use of his autism, he can remember everything. I was like, yeah, but it’s not just remembering stuff. It’s the facials, it’s the body language, it’s everything, the little things that go into it. Again, I don’t have to worry about him. We had that match a couple of weeks ago where we beat his team for the New Japan Six Man Championships, and I didn’t have to worry about stuff that we had together because I was like yeah I trust him and he’s so good at what he does. I don’t worry about him because I know he’s gonna do it no matter what, like he did Pac’s finish at the tribute show.”
So, how do you feel about wrestling now? If you had a moment where you’re like I’m not sure if I want to do this anymore, how do you feel about it now?
“Oh, definitely the G1 night two because night one was [Hiroyoshi] Tenzon’s last match, and I asked to come in early because I wanted to watch that; I wanted to be there for it. Because Tenzon helped me out in my career too, and that dude main evented the Tokyo Dome, so he knows what he’s doing. So I came in to watch that, and then the second night was when I redebuted. I had the most genuine smile on my face when I was landing in Tokyo, in forever. It’s been a while, and just because I was second-guessing myself or whatever. Then landing in Tokyo, so happy to be back. Then when I re-debuted, I was kind of nervous. People were tagging me in a lot of stuff on social media where it’s like, oh yeah, Jeff Cobb’s not going back to New Japan because he left on bad terms or he screwed the company over, which is not true, by the way.”
You shared something in August of this year. You had a bit of a health scare. You had a growth removed, and you didn’t expand on that. You just said you had a growth removed. You’re all good?
“Yeah. So I noticed I had this lump on the back of my head. I would say right before the pandemic, but it’s in the back of my head, so I don’t see it. Then your hair grows back, you don’t even think about it. But a couple years go by, and then I was like, oh wait, I still have my insurance from Japan because it lasts for the year. Then I was back in Japan, visiting friends, I wondered if I could just get this removed here. It’s probably cheaper than doing it stateside, and it was like 100 bucks for a 15-minute surgery.
So anyway, this is maybe six years after, I got it done. I’ll say it’s like June of this year. Then I remember going through that and they pulled it out. I was like, holy crap! Can I take a picture of this? I took a picture of it because it looked pretty gnarly. So, it was funny when he cut it and put it in the thing, and I’m laying on the table, and I was like, in my mind, I’m not a doctor, and I definitely don’t want to go to WebMD and ask about these things. Because the first thing they’re gonna tell you is cancer. ‘My nose is running.’ [WebMD says] Oh yeah, cancer. So he’s looking at it, and he says, ‘ah, yeah.’ He spoke a little bit of English. I was like, ‘I don’t think cancer because six years I would have felt something wron?’ But he looked at me. He goes, ‘I send for a test.’ I was like, all right, cool. Then he just goes, ‘Maybe cancer.’ I say, wait, what? You can’t start with that. All my buddies in Japan, doctors there are very like [to the point] ‘Ah, maybe okay, maybe broken.’ I don’t know if that’s a language translation thing or whatever, but yeah, he just says, ‘Ah, maybe cancer.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what? Excuse me?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, maybe one week come back.'”
So, what was the result?
“Oh, it was like a benign thing. Okay, it was like a cyst that went benign or something like that. I can’t really remember the full of it. Since then, I’m like, okay, you know your body more than anybody else. If something’s off or something feels weird, should definitely get it checked. Don’t wait a couple years like me, like an idiot.”
What is Jeff Cobb grateful for?
“Family, health and connections.”
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