AEW and The Best Friends Animal Society are collaborating for a charity effort to celebrate the Puppy Bowl.
The Super Bowl takes place on February 11, and AEW announced that the company is partnering with the society to celebrate the event with Animal Planet and TBS covering adoption fees at participating shelters.
You can check out the full announcement here.
Claudio Castagnoli has competed in several non-traditional matches in AEW, and he discussed the topic in a recent interview with Adrian Hernandez.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On wrestling in non-traditional matches: “What is tradition? Tradition is always expanding, right. Especially now, there’s six days of wrestling on TV. So you want to do something that is different but still in, in my personal preference that is, respectful to the tradition. So that is the challenge. What can we do to be different, to keep it fun, to keep it great, to keep the action going, to evolve this business while staying true to the tradition and being respectful towards it?”
On Orange Cassidy being an example of non-traditional wrestling: “Someone like Orange Cassidy, he’s certainly polarizing, and I think that’s good because that means he strikes a nerve. He is extremely good at what he does, and he is different and very entertaining. If I like the guy or not, that’s indifferent, and if you see the kids and the people come to the show, they’re dressed like Orange Cassidy, and the place is going crazy when he comes out. Don’t let him fool you, he can go. He can go like very few other people can in this business. I think that’s what fools other people. But that is our job, to evolve and make it fun and better and try to find new things.”
On a recent edition of “The Beat” podcast, The Acclaimed’s Anthony Bowens, who became interested in pro wrestling due to Sting, discussed working alongside the wrestling icon.
Bowens said, “I saw Sting on TV. They were doing commercials for Starrcade 97′, which is him versus Hulk Hogan. I was like, ‘who’s this guy with the face paint?’ He’s in this warehouse and he’s got this baseball bat. Like, so cool and then I watched the match and I was hooked ever since. I was one of the typical fans, you know, channel flipping going back and forth to each company back then and it just couldn’t get out of my system.”
He continued, “Sting is the absolute man and to have somebody like that who I grew up idolizing, one, have him as a coworker, two, to have his respect and approval of my work is just, it’s a dream come true. I had a little full circle moment with him because that show, Starrcade 97, was in Washington, D.C., and on my wrestling anniversary in Washington DC, we main evented Dynamite against Sting and it was just, it was so cool.”
