AEW star and ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli was interviewed on the latest Kurt Angle podcast. He discussed his favorite WWE memories, teaming with Jack Swagger and Zeb Coulter, his arrival in AEW, and many other topics.
Claudio was asked about the thought process that was behind putting Paul Heyman with him in 2014:
“I’m not exactly sure, but I think Paul said once that they just needed somebody to go out and talk about Brock Lesnar breaking the streak and they needed a reason for Paul to go out there. I was there with him for him to go out there and talk about me and then talk about Brock. I think right before Brock got back, we kind of got split up again. I think that was that if my memory serves me right there.”
On if he would have liked to have continued working with Heyman:
“I mean, yeah, but you have to make the best out of every situation. That was one thing I would have loved was to keep him as a mouthpiece, just seeing the success that he’s had, of course, but those were not the cards that I was dealt. So I was trying to make the best of what’s next.”
His thoughts on when Vince McMahon said Cesaro didn’t have the “It Factor.”
“It’s really hard to see what the it factor is because the it factor for everybody is different. For you, the it factor is something different than it is for me. With this Cesaro section and the Andre the Giant Battle Royal, and even after that the fans clearly respond to me in a certain way. Obviously, you want to prove them wrong, and you want to do everything you can to be like, no, actually, there is something there. It’s just something maybe different. So, to me, it’s just kind of like there’s kind of a factor for different people. Some people have that over the top huge charisma. Other people kind of have the more chill laid back charisma. There’s some people that are larger than life that you meet, and you’re like, wow, when you see them. There’s some people that just have to work for a long time to prove their longevity and equality and everything. So I feel like I’m maybe in that category that it takes a little bit longer. But then people will notice.”
Click below for the entire interview.
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