Baron Corbin: Wrestling’s Underappreciated Swiss Army Knife [Exclusive]

The true king of the underappreciated and unsung in the land of giants, Baron Corbin, real name Thomas Pestock, took every opportunity he was given and gave it everything he had. This is his story.

Baron Corbin / WWE.com

History remembers the heroes. The larger-than-life personalities of sports, movies, politics. Michael Jordan, Meryl Streep, Abraham Lincoln – the best of the best. Rightfully so, they accomplished something most people only dream of. They become immortalized.

History rarely remembers their teammates, however. These are the underappreciated, but not underperforming, characters. And while they’re overlooked in success, they are unfortunately often the ones who take the blame in failure or defeat. That’s reality.

It’s rare to find a better example of an all-around performer than Baron Corbin. An egoless professional in a world brimming with flamboyant personalities and towering egos, Corbin is the Swiss Army Knife of the squared circle, playing every hand he’s dealt to the maximum degree, whether he wins or must fold.

The true king of the underappreciated and unsung in the land of giants, Baron Corbin, real name Thomas Pestock, took every opportunity he was given and gave it everything he had. He had ambitions of reuniting with Bron Breakker as the popular NXT tag team, The Wolf Dogs, on the main roster. He hoped to see himself as a potential opponent against John Cena in his upcoming retirement run or challenging Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship. But most importantly to Corbin, he wanted to make it to 15 years with the company.

On November 1st, a week after he spoke to The Takedown, WWE indicated that it would not be renewing Corbin’s contract. After 12 years with WWE, Baron Corbin had to cash out from another game and find a new one to play.

Baron Corbin’s 12 year run with WWE has come to an end. pic.twitter.com/08f0hgxuN7

— Wrestle Ops (@WrestleOps) November 1, 2024

MORE: WWE Parting Ways with Baron Corbin, Indi Hartwell, And Tegan Nox

It’s far from the first time he’s had to reshuffle. A former Golden Gloves boxer, he attended Northwest Missouri State University and played as an offensive guard on the football team before making his jump to the NFL. He signed with the Indianapolis Colts and played with the team's practice squad in 2009 until being released.

“I was a bubble guy,” Corbin told me. “Obviously, if I was a starter, it would be a different story. But when you're a bubble guy who can be replaced fairly easily, you got to have all those things in a row. You got to be ready. I got through training camp, got to season one, and things happened, and I got let go.”

Folding his hand early wasn’t what he had in mind, and the last place Corbin wanted to be was back home, back at square one.

“I didn’t really want to go home back to Kansas City just because I'm going to see all my friends there and everyone's going to be asking what happened," he said. "I'm a rookie, so I'm trying to get back [to the NFL]. My uncle lived in West Chester, PA at the time, and he was like, ‘Hey, just come stay with me, come train until you get picked up and then you can go.’’

Corbin packed up his things and headed north to West Chester, a quiet suburb outside Philadelphia. His first night in town, he landed at a bar called The Note, which was “Jackass” star Bam Margera’s bar and live music venue - one of the few places in town to catch live music, and it's also the place he would meet some of his closest friends in his new home: Cameron Taylor, and another of the stars of “Jackass,” the late Ryan Dunn.

His first night out, he made his way to the upstairs area of The Note and felt someone jump onto his back – something he probably hadn’t experienced much since his days with the Colts.

It was Dunn.

“[He] jumped on my back because he was like, ‘Dude, you're huge.’ He felt like he just had to jump on top of me," Corbin says. "Then we drank until probably 4:00 in the morning that night, went down and cooked in the kitchen. We made grilled cheese sandwiches at 4:00 AM - completely unsafe because we were hammered.”

Corbin says West Chester became his new adopted home, a place where he didn’t have to be the NFL Guy. He could just be Tom Pestock.

“[Ryan] and I were so tight,” Corbin says.

Baron Corbin (L) and Ryan Dunn (R) / Baron Corbin

Dunn and their mutual friend, Zachary Hartwell, died in a car accident on June 20, 2011. While he still mourns the loss of his friends, he still laughs about his favorite Dunn stories. Nights playing video games, hitting each other with a cattle prod, and a night of losing thousands of dollars at the craps table in Atlantic City in the offseason, made even more painful and hilarious by Dunn’s choice of terribly expensive – and terrible smelling – snow boots.

In between these stops in West Chester, he signed with the Arizona Cardinals, first in 2009, then in 2010, and again in 2011 until his release a few months after signing a futures contract. He had never planned to leave football for good, but between the injuries and the multiple releases, he realized the NFL career was no longer in the cards. He had to fold.

Around the time of his final release from the Cardinals, he met a band manager by chance and struck up conversation.

He asked me, ‘What's the next thing for you if football is not it?’ I was like, ‘Man, I'm over football, so I'm ready to move on past it.’ I had an injury in my shoulder, and the way it was handled, to me, left a little bit of bad taste in my mouth. I think that's what got me let go. If my shoulder got hurt worse, they would have had to pay me the season salary or whatever because I would have to had surgery. It wasn't bad enough. I had to have surgery, but I could still play. It’s a paper leak … It just left me with a funky taste. I got replaced by a guy with Division I and didn't have a janky shoulder at the moment, so I was just angry.”

After further discussion with the manager, Corbin felt he had two other options: WWE or UFC. He chose WWE.

Corbin signed with WWE in August 2012, debuting in NXT, debuting with “The Lone Wolf” gimmick. He moved to the main roster in 2016.

2017 was one of the most successful of his career, where he became Mr. Money in the Bank, but also had a frustratingly disappointing failed cash in against Jinder Mahal. After the failed cash in, he beat Tye Dillinger for the United States Championship. The match, an important moment for him in his career, was only initially supposed to be him and AJ Styles, until they both advocated for Dillinger to be involved.

Corbin still glows when discussing that championship run. It felt like things were finally coming together after periods of starts and restarts, and it was an acknowledgement of everything he had worked so hard to do.

“[The U.S. Championship] was not something that was just handed to me,” Corbin says. “I've earned everything I've gotten in this world because I didn't come from the other world like some of these guys. You come in from Japan or the Indies that have a big name in the wrestling world. I've had to fight for everything I've earned.”

As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the Lone Wolf didn’t need any fixing. But once Corbin dropped the United States Championship to Dolph Ziggler on December 17, 2017, creative tried to reinvent the brand. The Lone Wolf gimmick was dropped in favor of Constable Corbin, an on-screen authority character tasked with being Stephanie McMahon’s official muscle on Monday Night Raw.

It was during this time that Corbin found his way into a program with Kurt Angle, which led to Angle’s retirement match at WrestleMania 35. Corbin was victorious, and the fans were ruthless. While Angle felt Corbin was a very talented and formidable opponent, he feels that WWE didn't utilize him to his full potential after such a monumental moment in both of their careers.

“Baron, I think he’s underrated," Angle said in a recent interview. "I think it kinda sucks — they started utilizing him the way they should have, they had him beat me, which I was okay with, it was my last match and obviously you’re gonna lose your last match when you retire. Baron, after that, he ended up winning King Of The Ring and then nothing else happened with him. It’s a little disappointing to know that he beat a legend at WrestleMania in the legend’s last match and they didn’t really do much with him after that. For me, it makes me feel like I did that for nothing."

After retiring Angle, Corbin found his way into the Universal Championship picture, but the character never allowed him the depth he needed to excel as a formidable, believable heel. Soon after he dropped the Constable Corbin gimmick, he transitioned into King Corbin in 2019, a heel character cut from the Hogan-Era in both stature and presentation. Corbin tells me the character was a Paul Heyman invention, one that was crushed by the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

During this time, WWE produced and aired content first from the empty WWE Performance Center, then from a television screen filled stadium known as the Thunderdome. While King Corbin showed promise initially in front of the live crowd, he was dealt another bad hand here.

“I think the pandemic killed the King because that was one of those things that needed to be in front of people. It was all about the presentation from being carried to the ring to the obnoxious giant 8,000 lbs. fur coat, and the crown, and all those things. That's something that needs to be presented to a live audience because it lives better that way, where it irritates people. When I'm looking down on them and waving at them from my giant throne that I'm being carried on, it just has more of an effect that way.”

King Corbin / WWE.com

Although the world of wrestling (and the world itself) was effectively closed to the public, Corbin continued to shine as the King character and was a central figure in the 2020 Money in the Bank ladder match, throwing both Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black off the top of WWE Headquarters. Once the King gimmick had run its course, he was then repackaged as a down and out version of himself, “Bum Ass Corbin”, not so affectionately labeled by his former Colts teammate, Pat McAfee. The rebrand proved to be very popular with the fans, culminating in a match with that year’s Briefcase winner, Big E.

Instead of feeling downtrodden or straddled with a goofy gimmick, Corbin says he took the opportunity head on; to prove he has the range and the depth to do anything, to take an uninspiring hand and turn it into a winning straight.

“There are some people in our world that would be like, ‘You want me to look like a bum and do what?! I'm a WWE Superstar!’" he says. "I have no ego. ‘You want me to do that? Hell yeah, let's go. This is going to be fun. Let's turn it up to 12.’ That's something I've always learned from seeing it. How do you take what they give you and turn it into gold? And it's a lot of work. I mean, you have to fully commit.”

Corbin was ready and willing to do anything, but he does admit that his next incarnation, Happy Corbin, wasn’t exactly his favorite. WWE attempted to insert JBL into the Happy Corbin story. It didn’t crush with the crowd the way either of them imagined, and the angle was dropped quickly.

“I can't put my finger on why it struggled,” Corbin said. “I think the people, and John and myself, wanted more out of it. I wanted [JBL] to be able to decapitate a few people, and it's a process of getting him back in the ring and getting him doing that. He just became like a mouthpiece for me in the introduction thing, where he would get the crowd all riled up for me. But I think we all just wanted a little bit more from that, and it just didn't click. I'll take the fall for it. I'm happy to do that because JBL is one of the greatest of all time, and sometimes things just don't click. It is what it is.”

Creatively frustrated with another folded hand, Corbin was sent back to WWE’s developmental program, NXT, to find his next win. Corbin was asked to begin a program with one of NXT’s hottest stars, Carmelo Hayes, and the two set the place on fire. By being himself and working with the new generation of talent, Corbin felt re-energized in a way he hadn’t before. He teamed with Bron Breakker and created the Wolf Dogs, a popular tag team that held the NXT Tag Team Championship.

Corbin’s original plan and hope was that he’d be able to ride this new fresh creative vehicle back to the top tier of the main roster, and after tagging with Apollo Crews through the summer, it certainly seemed like Baron Corbin was set with a full house hand.

So the news of Corbin’s contract non-renewal came as a shock to the professional wrestling world, including to him. He posted to his X account (formerly Twitter), "That's all she wrote folks. It's been real and I appreciate everyone who supported me."

That’s all she wrote folks. ✌🏼

It’s been real and I appreciate everyone who supported me. pic.twitter.com/tZmsw52liv

— Tom (@BaronCorbinWWE) November 1, 2024

One user wrote on his first Instagram post after his release, “WWE fumbled the bag letting you go.”

Corbin responded simply, “I appreciate that and feel the same.”

“Listen, Baron was one of the people that actually took a liking to me, and took me under his wing,” Carmelo Hayes said in a recent interview with Metro UK, shortly after the news of Corbin’s non-renewal broke.

“He did so much for me, he helped me so much, he gave me so much advice. Not just wrestling, life advice, money advice, so many things. I’m forever indebted to Baron Corbin – super talented, and I hate to see him go. That was one of those ones that really kinda hurt, seeing that, because believe it or not, me and Baron were pretty close, pretty tight. Everybody loved Baron.”

While the story of Baron Corbin may be finished at WWE for now, the future remains bright for Tom Pestock, the man who played to win, no matter the odds or outcomes.

“What I want it to be and what it will be may be different," he says. "I would love this to be a guy that gets invited to the Hall of Fame in 10 years as having a long career.”

He wants to be “that Swiss Army Knife” – someone who can do anything and everything in the name of entertaining the fans.

“You look at a Roman Reigns, what's [his] legacy? He's going to be one of the greatest of all time, one of the greatest heels of all time, one of the greatest baby faces of all time," Corbin says. "I think I've accepted that that's not going to be my legacy. How do I make the best of what I have? I think I'm doing that.”

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