Orange Cassidy spoke with Denise Salcedo ahead of the highly-anticipated AEW ALL IN 2023 premium live event on Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London, England.
During the discussion, the “Freshly Squeezed” one spoke about his AEW International Championship run, as well as which title defense has been his favorite thus far.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On his run with the AEW All-Atlantic title, which became the International title, and how he only initially wanted to dethrone PAC: “When I won the All-Atlantic Championship, it was called that before the International Championship, I really think the goal was just to beat PAC and take that title from him. It didn’t have an identity. It was a new championship, and I didn’t know what to do with it. So I just did what I thought I needed to do, and that was defend it as much as possible. There are championships in this company that are able to be defended against a certain group of people, like let’s call them the top five of the roster, those upper echelon people. The idea of having a championship that I could fight against the people that aren’t on television all the time, to not have a spotlight on them all the time, and that they are able to show what they can do. Because as we all know, AEW’s roster is very large, and there are tons of people that are just waiting for that opportunity to show what they can do because they’re all very talented. I was able to do that with this championship. I feel that this should be that. I think it should be something that we can show, ‘Hey, we all can do it.’ That’s what I’m most happy, that I was able to make this championship identify as.”
On which defense of the title in his 29-title defenses of the AEW International Championship has been his favorite: “I never like getting beat up, so I know none of them are my favorite. But it is interesting that the championship was, it started on Rampage. I defended it a lot on Rampage against a lot of those guys that we were just taking about. Everyone gave me a tough time, and then it slowly crept its way onto Dynamite. Then I started wrestling the Big Bills and the Jake Hagers, and then I started getting in more pain. I don’t remember the matches. I remember the pain that I felt through each one. So my back hurt tremendously because of Jake Hager, Big Bill, Danny Garcia. My hand is still throbbing because of Buddy Matthews. Zack Sabre Jr., he messed it up. I wrestled against Katsuyori Shibata. That’s crazy, right? I shouldn’t be doing that. But I am.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
