Trivia / Claudio Castagnoli

• Breakup Breakout: Ended up being the Shawn Michaels to many other teams's Jannetties, considering his degree of success in the WWE bigger than many of his teammates:
  • Swiss Money Holding: Towards Ares, Marc Roudin and Don Heavey. Ares was a fairly successful indie wrestler in the States before retiring in 2014. Roudin stayed semi-active in Europe through the early 2010s before retiring, but even he's a breakout compared to Don Heavy, who only lasted a couple years and was retired by 2004.
  • The Kings of Wrestling: Towards Chris Hero and Sara Del Rey. The former was on NXT twice as Kassius Ohno (in addition to competing on NXT UK during his second time in the company) and got released both times without ever making it past said brands. Meanwhile, Del Rey did get into WWE as well, but as a trainer.
• Continuity Nod: The clearly visible athletic tape on Cesaro's right shoulder originally was meant to protect a surgically operated rotator cuff he suffered in 2015. The injury has since healed enough for him to compete (although suffering the injury didn't even stop him originally) but the taped shoulder is now basically a permanent fixture on his ring gear.
• Fan Community Nickname: Cesaro Section.
• Fake Nationality: When he was in Europe during his early career; he played a Japanese man.
• Friendship on the Set: He and Tyson Kidd revealed that they were put together as a tag team by WWE without their input but they were able to click personally and became close friends.
• Promoted Fanboy: He has a deep admiration for Lou Thesz.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: WWE always showed more interest in Castagnoli than Hero, which meant in their tag matches Castagnoli was pinned the most on the idea he might be working for WWE exclusively soon. This made Castagnoli look like the weak link in the Kings of Wrestling.
• Recycled Soundtrack: He uses a remix of Dean Malenko's former theme Iceman. And his FCW theme was Iceman.
• Romance on the Set: He's in a relationship with Sara Del Rey.
• You Look Familiar: Fans of CHIKARA and/or Ring of Honor will, of course, recognize him as Claudio Castagnoli from the Kings of Wrestling, the three main members of whom were all at one point employed by WWE.

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