NXT Promo Made Cesaro Leave WWE, Big SmackDown Botch

Find out which particluar NXT promo convinced Cesaro (Claudio Castagnoli) to leave WWE. And, there was a big SmackDown botch.

NXT Promo Made Cesaro Leave WWE

Cesaro, now back as Claudio Castagnoli, found a home after WWE. In a surprise move, WWE and Castagnoli were not able to reach a deal.

There was not much noise made when Castagnoli left WWE. In fact, his departure did not break for several days.

Eventually, he signed with AEW and made a surprise appearance at the Forbidden Door pay per view. Then, he became part of Ring of Honor (ROH).

Quickly, he became the ROH World Champion. He held the title for months, until dropping it to Chris Jericho at Grand Slam last week.

While speaking during Starrcast V, Castagnoli discussed his WWE denture. He noted how Johnny Gargano’s farewell NXT speech inspired him to exit WWE.

“I may have felt for a while that I needed a change,” said Castagnoli. “Leading up to it, there were a bunch of signs.” 

“A bunch of stuff that different people said where they may have not even realized that they said it that kind of helped me make up my mind. One of the things was Johnny Gargano’s last promo in NXT where he said to ‘always bet on yourself.’” 

“That was like maybe the last straw. ‘Yup, he’s 100% right.’ It was a lot of things leading up to it.” 

“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because a lot of people do.” 

“When Cody left the first time, he made that list of who he wanted to wrestle. After that, everybody made a list. It was the new favorite thing.”

Now, he is part of the Blackpool Combat Club. The group features hard hitters and are one of the better stables in AEW. 

We will have to see what the future holds for Castagnoli since he has no longer holds a title.

Big SmackDown Botch

The SmackDown segment involving Karrion Kross, Scarlett, and Drew McIntyre did not go as planned. The mishap occurred during the fireball segment.

Scarlett tried to shoot a fireball at McIntyre’s face, but completely missed. McIntyre was unable to sell move and everyone had to adjust quickly since it was live TV.

Fightful Select was told the flash paper for the spot was not ready. They continued how the spot did not work in a moment where it, “needed to catch enough of someone’s face to sell.”

Usually, WWE lets the props teams handle those items. Although, this time around other employees purchased the paper.

After the fireball spot missed, McIntyre hit Kross with a spine buster before Scarlett hit a low blow. From there, Kross applied the Kross Jacket to end the segment.

The two will battle at Extreme Rules in a Strap match. WWE is ignoring Kross’ first run in WWE, so the pay per view match will be billed as his main roster debut.