Claudio Castagnoli On His First Month in AEW & ROH, If World Title Win Is A ‘Brass Ring’ Moment

Claudio Castagnoli is the ROH World Champion following Death Before Dishonor, and he was asked in the post-show media scrum about whether it was a “brass ring” moment for him. Castagnoli was famously referenced by Vince McMahon in a Stone Cold Podcast episode in 2014 as someone who hadn’t yet grabbed the “brass ring” by connecting with fans, and during the post-show Q&A Castagnoli was asked if this win felt like that kind of a moment to him.

“What is a brass ring moment,” he said before joking, “If somebody can find that out and explain it to me, that would be amazing.”

He went on to say, “I mean, it’s definitely an awesome moment. And I feel life and wrestling is all about moments, right? And how you seize them, how you act in them, and how you succeed in the good ones and 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 a brass ring moment because it was like, ‘Okay, how do you replace arguably one of the best wrestlers in history in Bryan Danielson,’ right? I have to step up, because I don’t want people to be like, ‘I don’t know, I kinda wanted [Danielson],’ you know what I mean?

So to be that and be able to pull that off, then go into Blood & Guts for 60 minutes, to me it was like, ‘This is great, this is a fantastic challenge.’ So if this is the culmination of my brass ring month then I think that’s a really good one.”

Castagnoli’s win at last night’s PPV is his first World Title win.