Claudio Castagnoli: ROH Title Win Is The Culmination Of A ‘Brass Ring’ Month In AEW

Claudio Castagnoli says this is just the beginning for him.

During the media scrum after his title win at ROH Death Before Dishonor, Claudio Castagnoli was asked if his win finally ended talk about him being underrated or underappreciated. Claudio said that he’s not sure if he was ever underappreciated because he’s always had fans in his corner, then shared how he’s approaching this milestone and the next one.

“First of all, I feel like we’re all fans, right, and that’s something to be proud of. I just watched the matches today because it’s fun. That’s why we are wrestling fans, all of us. That’s how I think what we should be in our heart because it’s more fun to enjoy it that way. I don’t know if I was really underappreciated because I feel the fans were always in my corner. They always appreciated me, so I always had them on my side, which made me very happy, and I feel that’s why I’m where I’m at today, that’s why I hold [the title]. So will this put the debate to rest? I don’t know, that’s a question for the people debating it. For me, I said that before, this is just the beginning.

“Any time you reach a new height in your career, you always have two choices. You can either say okay, this is great, this is where I sit down and rest, or you could be like this is where the hard work just starts, and I have to pick up my game, I have to get better, I have to improve at this and do that, and I feel that’s how I always approach life. You’re happy with where you’re at, and I’m extremely ecstatic to be the Ring of Honor World Champion, but I also understand that there comes a responsibility with it, and there comes expectations with it, and I’m ready to step it up.”

The new ROH World Champion was also asked about Vince McMahon’s infamous “brass ring” comments in 2014 where he claimed that no one, including Claudio (then known as Cesaro in WWE), was connecting with the audience. Asked if winning the ROH World Championship was his “brass ring” moment finally coming to fruition, Claudio joked that he’s not sure what that meant but summed up his first month in All Elite Wrestling as a sign of reaching that goal.

“What is a brass ring? If somebody can find that out and explain it to me, that would be amazing. I mean it’s definitely an awesome moment, and I feel life and wrestling is all about moments, right, and how you seize them and how you act in them and how you succeed in the good ways and in the bad because that’s the journey, right? And everything I did in my life and in my career led up to this, so if that’s a brass ring, I would say the first month was kind of a brass ring moment because it was one of those, okay, how do you replace arguably one of the best wrestlers in history in Bryan Danielson?

“So then it was like okay, I gotta step up because I don’t want people to be like, ‘I don’t know, I kind of wanted…’ You know what I mean? So to be that and be able to pull that off and then go into Blood & Guts for 60 minutes, you know what I mean? So it was like to me, it was like this is great, this is a fantastic challenge. So if this is the culmination of my brass ring month, I think that’s a really good one.”

RELATED: Claudio Castagnoli Discusses His ‘All-Star First Month’ With AEW/ROH

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