Former ROH World Champion Dalton Castle has been a mainstay of ROH programming for the past ten years.
Prior to the pandemic and throughout the pandemic period, Castle emerged as one of the faces of ROH, but his future was in doubt when ROH revealed they would be taking a break at the end of 2021.
Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Castle stated that in January 2021, he began to doubt his own future. Nevertheless, in March 2022, Tony Khan buying ROH gave him a flash of insight and gave him a newfound enthusiasm for wrestling.
“It was a wild night, emotionally. Right before that, I don’t know how many people know the real story of Ring of Honor, we closed the doors like three months before Tony bought it. Nine to ten months before that, I had gone through this weird crossroads where I was going to leave Ring of Honor. A last second decision, I just realized just how incredibly lucky I was to be part of ROH and how happy I was there and how I figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I decided, ‘No, I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay right here.’ That was January 2021 when I made that realization,”
Dalton Castle on AEW Unrestricted
Castle continued:
“It was the best eight months of my life. There was this weird clarity, I was the happiest I’ve ever been, I feel like my work improved because I finally figured out what to focus on. I feel like I had some of the best eight months of wrestling in my life. I was weird because there wasn’t an audience, we were still doing closed arena shows. Come October, we had this meeting, ‘All that happiness you found. It’s over. We’re closing the doors. Everyone is fired. Get out!’ I was still in a good mood because I had that moment of clarity and I knew what I loved and what was important, but I didn’t have a job anymore, so it was this weird balance between emotions. March, Tony bought Ring of Honor, and instead of this shock and confusion, it was optimism. I realized, ‘Finally, someone who loves pro wrestling is in charge of this. I think we’re going to be okay.’ I kept thinking positively about it and then I got invited to be part of the first show. It was amazing. I have so much gratitude towards Tony and everyone who has helped out to revive and keep Ring of Honor alive. It’s a wild time and I’m happy about it.”
Dalton Castle on AEW Unrestricted
Before ROH resumed its weekly television programming, Castle would be a part of the AEW program. The ROH Six-Man Tag Team Titles were won by Castle and The Boys at ROH Death Before Dishonor 2022.
On the March 29 AEW Dynamite broadcast, Castle & The Boys wrestled Blackpool Combat Club (Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley, & Wheeler Yuta).
h/t to Fightful for the transcription. The original can be found here : Dalton Castle Says He Considered Leaving ROH In January 2021
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