Orange Cassidy Reveals His Original Plans For The AEW International Title

Orange Cassidy is riding high in All Elite Wrestling at the moment and he is currently in the midst of a critically acclaimed run as AEW International Champion.

Cassidy won the then-AEW All-Atlantic Championship from PAC back in October 2022 and The King of Sloth Style has since successfully defended the belt on 24 occasions against the likes of Trent Seven, Daniel Garcia, Buddy Matthews, The Butcher, Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal, and Bandido. 

Speaking about his title reign with Wrestling Inc., Cassidy revealed he decided that he wanted to use the International Championship as a vehicle to get talents on AEW TV and showcase different styles of pro wrestling.

"I'll tell you what wasn't my idea, to get beat up every single week and defend this thing. When I got the All-Atlantic Championship in October, the idea was just really to beat PAC, and just finally get that win over him. And along with it came the All-Atlantic Championship and I didn't really know what this title meant. I didn't know what it was for. I didn't really understand... It didn't have an identity really, but it did have a lineage already of PAC who is obviously one of the best wrestlers in the world," Cassidy stated.

"To live up to that, I ain't got nothing to prove to anybody. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. It's going to be what I want to do. But when I had the Independent Wrestling Championship early in my career on the Indies, I had this philosophy of, if you want a shot, I'll give it to you. And I think I wanted to use this as a tool to get people on television that you normally wouldn't see on television. Maybe somebody that works really, really hard that deserves a title shot. And I decided to make this title the belt that everybody else who wasn't ranked number one could go after and show different styles, show different wrestling, show the wide variety of fantastic talent that AEW has. It's just unfortunate that I'll have to punch them all in the face to win this back. It was something I stumbled upon. I didn't really set out to do that, its just what happened."

Cassidy has been defending the title every week on Dynamite in widely-praised matches for the past several months, with the current angle being that Orange is becoming more and more worn down. He has narrowly escaped with wins in recent weeks, including on the June 7 edition of Dynamite where he defeated Swerve Strickland after grabbing a handful of the Mogul Embassy member's tights.