In a recent interview with BILD ahead of AEW All In 2023, Claudio Castagnoli vowed to compete in the NJPW G1 Climax tournament before he retires.
Castagnoli debuted for NJPW this past June and will be part of Stadium Stampede at AEW All In 2023. The ROH World Champion said,
“Yes. Before I retire, I will participate. That’s for sure.”
During the latest episode of his “The ARN Show” podcast, Arn Anderson lavished praise on Konosuke Takeshita and Ricky Starks while also discussing the lack of psychology going on in wrestling.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On who he likes watching in the ring: “Well, obviously, spread amongst all the different companies that there are, each one of them has somebody special. And a bunch of somebody special. It depends on what your taste is. A lot of talent [is] getting exposed. This is that hot time of the season, of course it’s summertime and the kids are out of school. And everybody’s trying to push to pick up those extra viewers. I like Will Hobbs. I’m happy to see Cody [Rhodes]’ success. He’s doing a really good job. And as far as getting to watch Impact, I wish I could watch it more because I have friends there; Heath Slater, John Skyler, and some of those guys there, Tommy Dreamer. I still enjoy watching the old-school guys.
“I think when you talk about personal preference, and you talk about variety and different guys that are in the business today that are getting a lot of TV time, it just depends on what your what your preference is. I think Ricky Starks has a lot of potential. You know, and he’s just now coming into his own. Of course, you look at — what’s the kid from New Japan Wrestling,? The Japanese kid that’s with Don Callis as his manager? What is his name? I hate even to try to say it. [Konosuke Takeshita]. You know, the one thing that I like about him is he’s kind of working his way into understanding the American style. It’s not just the Japanese style out of him. He’s some sort of morphing into being able to work the American style, and I’m enjoying his progress.”
On lack of psychology with chops: “Some of the Japanese [style] — if you’re that’s your style, the exchanges on the — with the flippers being way too many and things like that. Some of the mistakes I think they make, just standing there and letting the guy chop your chest till it bleeds doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But that’s just my style, right? You know, it doesn’t take ten heavy chops to knock me down, that’s for damn sure…. And the thing about it is — here’s the truth, guys. For all you guys that like to do those. After about the third one, the crowd becomes desensitized. And even though those things are caving in your chest and stinging like all hell, the audience quits reacting to it. And when they quit reacting to it, the audience at home quits reacting to it.
“So if you stand there and hit each other and never try to avoid one or duck one, or turn a shoulder into one. To me — and this is just me now, it’s just one man’s opinion; you look foolish. Especially when I can see your chest and the handprints growing, and growing, and growing. And you’re not letting me know that that hurts like hell. You’re cheating yourself, and you’re cheating your reaction, which means you’re cheating your audience. It starts out being impressive. And then it’s almost like — I don’t know that they don’t believe what’s going on so much, but it just gets redundant.”
