In February, Claudio Castagnoli's WWE contract expired and he chose to not re-sign with the company.
Castagnoli (Cesaro in WWE) signed with the company in 2011 and was featured on television throughout his time in WWE and NXT, winning multiple Tag Team Championships with multiple partners. In his final year with the company, Claudio defeated Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 37 and challenged Roman Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania Backlash.
In his final months, he was largely feuding with Sheamus.
During Starrcast V, Claudio sat down with Chris Van Vliet and explained his thought process as he decided to leave WWE.
"A lot of thought, actually," he said when asked how much thought went into his decision. "I may have felt for a while that I needed a change. Leading up to it, there were a bunch of signs. A bunch of stuff that different people said where they may have not even realized that they said it that kind of helped me make up my mind. One of the things was Johnny Gargano's last promo in NXT where he said to 'always bet on yourself.' That was like maybe the last straw. 'Yup, he's 100% right.' It was a lot of things leading up to it. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it because a lot of people do. When Cody left the first time, he made that list of who he wanted to wrestle. After that, everybody made a list. It was the new favorite thing. I wanted to do it differently. I'm against the grain a lot. 'Everybody is doing this, let me try to do this over here.' I felt it was better that way because I figured if I want to keep wrestling and I pop up somewhere, it's going to be a bigger surprise. Wrestling is all about moments and if I would have been like, 'Alright, I'm leaving,' then people would have known and it would have been, 'Okay, I'm gonna show up somewhere.' If it's quiet then it's 'what's going to happen? When is it going to happen?' That's the beauty in wrestling. You want to be surprised. Yes, you want to know, but you also love being surprised. To me, that's a very important thing. You do know, maybe, but there's always that doubt. That's what makes magic happen. I feel I'm more action than talking."
Gargano cut his final NXT promo on the December 7 episode of the program. He left the promotion following his contract expiring and remains a free agent.
Claudio stayed relatively quiet online following his WWE departure until he officially joined AEW at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, replacing Bryan Danielson against Zack Sabre Jr.
Asked why he decided to ultimately leave WWE, Claudio said, "There was a couple. One of the things was, there are so many people that I want to be in the ring with at AEW and Ring of Honor. I have matches for the next years that I want to do. While there are still guys in WWE that I haven't wrestled that I want to wrestle, that number is less than at AEW. At my core, I always want to improve and get better and have new challenges. When I first went from Ring of Honor to WWE, I didn't do so to be on TV or anything. For me, it was the logical next step. I had done a lot in Ring of Honor, what's the next step and next challenge, the best guys. Same thing here, what's the next step, the next challenge? AEW has been awesome. I had pretty much the best first month I could have dreamt of."
Claudio won the ROH World Championship at ROH Death Before Dishonor when he defeated Jonathan Gresham. He said winning the ROH World Title capped off his "brass ring month."
Claudio is set to defend the title against Konosuke Takeshita at AEW Battle of the Belts.
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