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AEW Men’s World Championship
Orange Cassidy versus Jon Moxley (c)
"You're going to pick a fight. And you're going to lose." – Tyler Durden, Fight Club #AEWDynamite 🤼
— Aaron – GrapPro.com (@aaron.wrotkowski.ca) November 20, 2024 at 10:07 PM
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When Orange Cassidy told Mark Briscoe and the rest of The Conglomeration on Wednesday night that he planned to go it alone against the Death Riders, it sounded like the dumbest plan possible. Cassidy tried to tell them he didn’t want anyone else to be hurt and Briscoe had to remind OC that they were fighters. They fight. They get hurt sometimes. Mark Briscoe was completely right but Orange Cassidy wasn’t thinking about logic. He was thinking about what all this meant to Jon Moxley.
Jon Moxley returned to call out Darby Allin. He insisted he was taking over All Elite Wrestling. He reformed the Blackpool Combat Club without Bryan Danielson, adding PAC and Marina Shafir. He beat Darby for his title shot and beat Bryan Danielson for the AEW Men’s World Championship. Moxley insists this is a fight for the soul of All Elite Wrestling, about beating the potential out of men who have been in the company since the beginning. To beat the complacency out of them.
Orange Cassidy knows this doesn’t make sense. Jon Moxley is just coming to the show every week to assault people and run off in a truck. This Crusade is really about making Jon Moxley king of the castle and creating a situation in AEW where it’s always in a state of war and always in a state of violence as survival. Moxley thrives in this. He breathes in this. Same to PAC. Same to Claudio. Maybe same to Wheeler Yuta.
Orange Cassidy pointed it out when he said Jon Moxley doesn’t need AEW like he does. Moxley was IWGP World Heavyweight Champion just this year. He could walk into WrestleMania any year and make millions doing it. He doesn’t need any of this. Orange Cassidy does. It’s easy to forget sometimes that Orange Cassidy is older than Jon Moxley. Cassidy made his debut in pro wrestling in 2004, same year as Moxley but two years older.
Orange Cassidy spent years under a mask as Fire Ant in CHIKARA. There’s a famous quote by Mike Quackenbush essentially mocking Cassidy for trying to make it under the Orange Cassidy monicker instead of just accepting his role as a Fire Ant. Everyone knows an ant. Nobody cares about Orange Cassidy.
Mike Quackenbush's quote about Fire Ant being more marketable than Orange Cassidy will live next to the Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles because guitars were just a fad. https://t.co/9EuXbyLHNA pic.twitter.com/PJBHc225zZ
— Aaron – GrapPro.com (@AaronWrotkowski) July 15, 2024
OC believed in himself and believed in the character he spent years making little money on the independents but making a name for himself. He slowly gained buzz with a character that it was clear WWE would never understand. There was no path to stardom for Orange Cassidy until All Elite Wrestling was announced in 2019.
You watch OC in 2019 and it felt like he wasn’t even going to be used as a wrestler. He was the manager of Best Friends in a way. The mascot. It wasn’t until the match with PAC at Revolution, “Orange Cassidy is going to try” that the character quickly became more than just a mascot. He was a star. He was a pro wrestler in All Elite Wrestling. He accomplished the dream. Could he complete it by actually being AEW Men’s World Champion?
So when Moxley talks about pushing men to finally be a success or be destroyed, who has pushed harder than Orange Cassidy? He beat Jon Moxley for the International Championship last year. He’s beaten Chris Jericho. He has proved time and time again he deserves to be in the ring with the best wrestlers in the world. What’s left to push when it comes to him?
Maybe Jon Moxley does have a plan. Maybe that plan is more about Darby Allin, the guy who put his shot in the line with little resistance, who struggles to stay concentrated on climbing the top of the mountain in All Elite Wrestling. That’s why Moxley said this fight with Orange Cassidy isn’t on the peak. It’s in the valley. Because in the valley it’s going to get dirty. The Death Riders are not about Orange Cassidy becoming greater. It’s about… breaking him.
That’s why they duct taped his arms with his hands in his pockets at the end of Dynamite and essentially bullied him. Bullied a 40-year-old former champion in AEW. They wanted to make him crack. They could beat him up. Whatever. He’s a wrestler, he’s a fighter, just like Mark Briscoe said. You beat him up he’s just going to come back another day. This was about humiliating him, about cracking that sloth style exterior and breaking the human inside. The man who didn’t want this fight in the first place.
And yet Orange Cassidy still did the shin kicks. He was defiant to the end. The Death Riders resorted again to a beat down, this time finally Conglomeration coming out for the save. And when OC was freed from the duct tape, he got up, put on his sunglasses, and put his hands in his pockets by choice.
He looked out at Jon Moxley and said I am Orange Cassidy. I will forever be Orange Cassidy. All Elite Wrestling is my home. I might lose to five people beating me up.
But you will never break me.
On a night where Darby Allin lost to Claudio Castagnoli, which should have been a major blow to Team AEW, this ending? This was the first time All Elite Wrestling fought back. Not by becoming the warriors Jon Moxley was trying to mold them into, but by defying the warrior code. Orange Cassidy defied the Death Riders by staying the same.
For the first time? The Death Riders lost a battle for the spirit of AEW to an AEW Original.
To the bitter end. To the bitter fucking end. #AEWDynamite 🤼
— Aaron – GrapPro.com (@aaron.wrotkowski.ca) November 20, 2024 at 10:04 PM
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Jon Moxley now knows no matter what he tries? He cannot break one AEW Original. And it’s the man he has to face in the main event of Full Gear.
