A Corey Cabanban loss is rare.

As a matter of fact, the only time the Saint Louis wrestler has dropped a high school match was early in his freshman year. Since then, he’s won them all, including three state championships.

Now a senior, Cabanban is going for that final feather in his headgear, and it’s what he’s been working for all along — a fourth state championship. Only eight (four boys and four girls) have ever done it.

“There are a lot of other people coming for me and coming after me, thinking that they’ve got to beat the best to be the best,” Cabanban said upon his return from a weekend tournament on Maui. “It makes me more motivated to stay on top and be No. 1.”

Losing was a lot more common when Cabanban started wrestling in first grade.

“I used to get beat up and get cracks and lose a lot of matches,” he said. “But I never stopped wrestling.”

Added Crusaders coach Al Chee, “He wasn’t born a state champion. If he stopped because he was getting cracks or a few setbacks, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in now. Everybody starts on the bottom.”

As a sophomore in 2016, Cabanban passed his toughest test since that 4-3 loss a year earlier to Punahou’s Connor Lee. That’s when he beat Campbell’s Triston Santos 4-3 in the 113-pound state final.

“I had 16 seconds to hold him down,” Cabanban said. “We got into a nice scramble with 10 seconds to go and the whole crowd was screaming. I remember holding on tight to his leg so he couldn’t get out.”

Those two ultra-close experiences — and another a few days ago on Maui, when he was inadvertently head-butted, got a swollen black eye and felt horrible that his coaches pulled him out of a match for safety reasons — have taught him that he can’t take anything for granted.

“We didn’t want to risk for it to get lacerated and for him to get stitches and miss more time,” Chee said. “He learned something in that moment. Even though you may not lose a match, you could get injured and it could hamper you or it could stop the match. That’s a wake-up call for somebody in his situation. He’s thinking he was going to get in three or four matches and get his reps in, and he was leading 10-2 in the first minute of that one. Maybe it would have been better to finish it and don’t put yourself in for extra minutes if you don’t have to.”

Chee agreed that there are a lot of people who would like to stop Cabanban from getting a fourth title, but in the same breath, also said that due to Cabanban’s ability, a lot of people could be scurrying to other weight divisions to avoid him.

“That’s not to say he’s immortal or invincible, but he is a proven commodity around here,” Chee said. “And perhaps the others could become a state champion at another weight.”

A bunch of people in Cabanban’s life have been immensely helpful in his development, including his mom and dad, Chris and Kaui, brother Cody (now wrestling at Menlo College), practice partner Tyler Ibarra, home training partner Zayren Terukina of Campbell and his dad, Darryl Terukina, Saint Louis assistant coach Kaha‘a Rezantes, and former Iranian Olympian and current U.S. Greco-Roman assistant coach Ahad Javansalehi.

Javansalehi made it possible for Cabanban and some of his teammates to visit Cornell for summer training and meet coach Rob Koll. Cabanban said Cornell is near the top of his list of possible colleges to attend.

“I want to continue my wrestling career,” he said.

Cabanban was asked what he would tell a wrestler if he was coaching that wrestler in a match against himself.

“I would say, ‘That kid’s a badass.’”

And that, in a nutshell, is the confidence needed to be an ultra-successful wrestler.

Chee expounded on Cabanban’s confidence level: “If you’re going to be a badass and if you are going to walk out there with the confidence you need to have, it can’t be a false confidence. It’s got to be underpinned by full fact and knowledge that you’ve trained harder than anybody else and you deserve this. Being at this level is reserved for those who do the work, and that’s true for anything in life.”

Pressed further for the prescription on how to beat him, Cabanban added that he would say, “He’s human, you’re human. What makes him different than you?”

Chee went a bit deeper on the “how to beat Corey” formula if he were coaching against Cabanban. So, listen up 126-pound contenders.

“Get in early, be aggressive,” Chee said. “The longer the match goes on, the scales tip against you. Try to pin him in the first round, as impossible as that seems against a guy like Corey. If it goes six minutes, he’s going to win. Surprise him early. If you hold back, you’re going to die a slow death. And if you catch him early and don’t finish it, you are waking up a sleeping giant.”