P.E. with Klayton Cannon.

P.E. teacher and basketball coach Korey Craddock has a wrestling career on the side and goes by the stage name, Klayton Cannon.

Recently, students have found out about P.E. teacher and basketball coach Korey Craddock’s wrestling career. He fought under the stage name, Klayton Cannon, after a video of one of his fights was shared throughout the school. Craddock has been wrestling on the side for about two years and has only recently made it on live television. Due to some of his fights now airing on television, the school has had a big reaction after watching his fights. His family is supportive of his wrestling career and have enjoyed the fights.

For most of Craddock’s life he’s enjoyed wrestling. “I’ve been a fan all my life,” said Craddock. He would watch wrestling on television and collect action figures of famous wrestlers at the time. Throughout college Craddock never thought he would actually pursue wrestling due to how difficult it would be to get started, but about 2 years ago Craddock heard about a wrestling academy and started training over the summer after he had already been teaching since 2007. 

After training and picking up small fights whenever he could for the past couple years, Craddock’s trainer, who he had been fighting for in promotions and worked for Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW). OVW is the biggest promotion in the state of Kentucky and one of the biggest independent promotions in the country due to their fights being broadcasted on the fight network and on Youtube. OVW is partially owned by Matt Jones, who owns Kentucky Sports Radio, and Al Snow, a former WWE wrestler. 

”Someone told me they liked what they saw so they had me back,” said Craddock. When asked what his goals were in wrestling by his trainer, Craddock mentioned fighting for OVW and fighting on television, so his trainer scheduled Craddock for a tryout in a dark match in june. A dark match is a fight that isn’t broadcasted and happens before shows. OVW liked Craddock and his character and asked him to come back and put him in a match that was broadcasted on television. From there, they have asked Craddock back to fight about twice a month or every other week. So far, Craddock had fought five matches for OVW. 

“I play a bad guy, I play a villain, so I wanted something that sounded snobby and irritating,” said Craddock. When picking a stage name, Craddock wanted a name that kept his initials and fit the character he wanted to play, so he picked the name, Klayton Cannon. Craddock wanted to step out of his comfort zone and branch out with this character, “I’m not necessarily a real boisterous or outgoing personality,”. He wanted his character to be a villain because part of wrestling is about getting a reaction from people and being entertaining. Craddock wants his character to be unlikeable and to have a “better than you” attitude. “ Think it’s easier to make people to not like me than trying to get them to like me,”

Due to Craddock’s OVW fights being aired on television and posted to YouTube, students at Bullitt East have found videos of the fights and have shared them around the school. Craddock was surprised to hear that most of Bullitt East had found out about his fights because he hadn’t said much about it to anyone at Bullitt East. “I’m not wanting to go around and tell people about the stuff that I’m doing or what I’ve accomplished,” said Craddock. Craddock doesn’t mind people knowing about him wrestling, “If somebody asked me about it, I would be glad to tell them,” said Craddock.

“I’ve had some teachers and even some students come up to me and ask, ‘are you wrestling?” said Craddock. Now that students have found out about Craddock wrestling, they were surprised and shocked that Craddock would wrestle which is part of why it became such a big deal within the school. Students who had Craddock as a teacher knew he usually kept to himself and wasn’t very outgoing, which added to the shock when they saw the video. The video most people saw was one of Craddock’s fights with OVW where he fought one of OVW’s most popular fighters, Luscious Lawrence.

When it comes to Craddock’s family, they are very supportive of his wrestling career. “She’s kind of like, ‘Hey go live your dream,’” said Craddock. His wife is supportive of his wrestling career and helps take care of the kids while he is at his fights, and now they could watch his fights on television when he has fights with OVW, “She thinks It’s cool especially with the OVWs,” said Craddock.

Craddock’s oldest son enjoys wrestling just like how he did when he was a kid, “He’s like me, he watches the pay per views with me and he has the action figures, all that stuff,”. Craddock’s son is a big fan of wrestling and he thinks it’s cool to see his dad wrestle, he would go to training sessions but he hasn’t been to any of Craddock’s official matches; however his son still doesn’t see his dad as a pro, “He still doesn’t put me, and what he sees people do on tv on the same level.”

Craddock doesn’t have any big goals moving forward with wrestling, he is comfortable with where he is now and he doesn’t see himself going any further into wrestling. “If you would have asked me what my goals were six months ago, my goals would probably be what I’m doing now.”