Tony Khan Discusses Booking The Rise Of Orange Cassidy

AEW president and CEO Tony Khan has discussed the rise of one of the promotion’s most popular stars, ‘Freshly Squeezed’ Orange Cassidy.

Cassidy lost out against Chris Jericho in the main event of night one of Fyter Fest two weeks ago, but fired back last night by having orange juice poured over Jericho and the Inner Circle in the ring.

Speaking with New York Post, Tony Khan spoke about Cassidy’s rise and the conscious effort to not have Cassidy do too much in the ring. He said:

“I was like, ‘oh my God, like that’s it.’ He can do all these things and sometimes he doesn’t bring them out until later in a match. What we need to do is hide those things as long as possible. People don’t realize he can do those things and so the long-term idea was he would be like a manager, a character, a variety character on the show and then when the time was right, we’d put him in a big program, a pay-per-view. He would have his first match as a singles star and that would be the beginning of the story and the breakout.

“There was a six-man tag where he (Cassidy) did a couple of things and when he got through the curtain I was like, ‘What are you doing?’, He’s like, ‘I did a stunner.’ You did the Stun Dog and I’m like ‘Save all that stuff man.’

“Once I figured out how capable he was, really tried to put something together for him that would allow him to camouflage his skill until the PAC match and then the PAC match was when we started to unleash all this stuff we had been holding back.”