Claudio Castagnoli is All Elite.
Claudio Castagnoli’s WWE contract expired in February and he decided not to re-sign. In his final year with WWE, Claudio defeated Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 37 and challenged Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania Backlash in a losing effort. His last real feud in WWE was with longtime tag team partner, Sheamus. During Starrcast V, Claudio spoke with Chris Van Vliet and explained his thought process behind leaving WWE and his a Johnny Gargano promo influenced his decision.
A lot of thought, actually. I may have felt for a while that I needed a change. Leading up to it, there were a bunch of signs. A bunch of stuff that different people said where they may have not even realized that they said it that kind of helped me make up my mind. One of the things was Johnny Gargano’s last promo in NXT where he said to ‘always bet on yourself.’ That was like maybe the last straw. ‘Yup, he’s 100% right.’ It was a lot of things leading up to it. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because a lot of people do. When Cody left the first time, he made that list of who he wanted to wrestle. After that, everybody made a list. It was the new favorite thing. I wanted to do it differently. I’m against the grain a lot. ‘Everybody is doing this, let me try to do this over here.’ I felt it was better that way because I figured if I want to keep wrestling and I pop up somewhere, it’s going to be a bigger surprise. Wrestling is all about moments and if I would have been like, ‘Alright, I’m leaving,’ then people would have known and it would have been, ‘Okay, I’m gonna show up somewhere.’ If it’s quiet then it’s ‘what’s going to happen? When is it going to happen?’ That’s the beauty in wrestling. You want to be surprised. Yes, you want to know, but you also love being surprised. To me, that’s a very important thing. You do know, maybe, but there’s always that doubt. That’s what makes magic happen. I feel I’m more action than talking.
– Claudio Castagnoli via Chris Van Vliet
When asked why he ultimately decided to leave, he says there were a couple reasons.
There was a couple. One of the things was, there are so many people that I want to be in the ring with at AEW and Ring of Honor. I have matches for the next years that I want to do. While there are still guys in WWE that I haven’t wrestled that I want to wrestle, that number is less than at AEW. At my core, I always want to improve and get better and have new challenges. When I first went from Ring of Honor to WWE, I didn’t do so to be on TV or anything. For me, it was the logical next step. I had done a lot in Ring of Honor, what’s the next step and next challenge, the best guys. Same thing here, what’s the next step, the next challenge? AEW has been awesome. I had pretty much the best first month I could have dreamt of.
– Claudio Castagnoli via Chris Van Vliet
Claudio won his first world title as he captured the ROH World Championship at Death Before Dishonor and is set to defend it against Konosuke Takeshita at AEW Battle of the Belts.
H/T Fightful
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