For anyone who dismissed Orange Cassidy because of his slacker persona, there’s not much more he could have done over the last 18 months or so of AEW programming.
Not only did he have absolutely incredible matches on both the inaugural Forbidden Door last summer (against Will Ospreay) and in the main event of All Out this year (with Jon Moxley), he embarked on arguably the greatest title run in AEW’s history in-between, defending the International Championship week after week.
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His character may be a slacker, but Cassidy busted his ass on a regular basis, showing he’s far more than his often comedic gimmick. He connected with a wide range of fans along the way, but there’s no question he still has some vocal detractors — particularly on the world’s top repository for consequence-free hot takes, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
So does Cassidy care if the haters won’t publicly come around to him? Not at all, according to what he told Busted Open Radio (h/t Fightful for the transcription).
I think I will change people’s perception but they will never admit it. How many people on Twitter will be like, ‘You know what? I was wrong.’ Maybe a couple of people, but we’re talking less than 10%. That’s okay. I don’t care. If you don’t like me and you don’t like what I’m doing, and you don’t appreciate what I’m doing, that’s fine. I’m not going to stop doing what I want to do. I’m not going to stop wrestling the way I wrestle because that’s what I do.
Busted Open co-host Mark Henry compared Cassidy to Deion Sanders for doing things differently than almost everyone else, which is high praise considering the frenzy that Coach Prime has stirred up in college football as the coach of Colorado.
Deion certainly doesn’t let his naysayers slow him down, and neither, it seems, will Freshly Squeezed.