YMMV / Orange Cassidy

• And You Thought It Would Fail: The premise of his gimmick seemed like an extremely hard sell on a nationally televised weekly wrestling promotion. Even Tony Khan was notably skeptical of his gimmick initially. Fast forward several years later, and he's one of the keystones of the company, regularly being one of the top merch sellers and receiving some of the loudest pops of the night on a regular basis.
• Awesome Music:
  • For a guy whose entire gimmick is laziness, his AEW theme song, "Juicy", is pretty rocking.
  • As of March 21, 2021, AEW acquired the permissions for Orange Cassidy to be one of the first wrestlers in the promotion to use licensed music as his theme, and the song in question could not be more fitting: "Where Is My Mind?", the Signature Song of The Pixies.
  • His theme would be updated again on June 29th, 2022. Currently, Orange Cassidy walks out to a theme he often used in the indies: the Rock classic "Jane" by Jefferson Starship.
• Base-Breaking Character: It's not uncommon for a group of older, more traditional wrestling fans (particularly the American smark scene), to dislike him for the fact his gimmick pokes fun at the gimmicked combat nature of wrestling unto itself. Divisive internet figure Jim Cornette in particular is famous for his absolute and unforgiving hatred of Orange Cassidy for this reason, to the point Cornette refuses to use his name when talking about him, instead calling him "my dog Pockets". Orange is popular with the younger smark crowd who grew up in the "post-kayfabe era", foreign audiences in general with less strict standards of wrestling, and fans who appreciate that Orange has a completely unique gimmick that still translates into an entertaining wrestling style.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: One of AEW's breakout stars in the promotion's inception for his unique gimmick and wrestling style, particularly with the younger and internet-based crowds. He has been, in fact, consistently one of the promotion's absolute top-sellers in terms of merch sales, even above some far more established names (like Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley) at times.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Dismissing him as nothing more than a comic relief jobber. This might have been the case early in his career with AEW—but since catching on with fans, he's been pretty consistently booked as one of the promotion's top athletes. He has the distinction of (among other things) beating Adam Cole in an unsanctioned match, beating PAC to take the International Championship, fighting Cody Rhodes to a draw, and holding his own against Miro in a tag-team match. He also set a record for the longest reign as International Champion, only dropping the belt after a very hard-fought match with Jon Moxley himself, who Orange later beat in a rematch.
• Memetic Badass: The crux of Cassidy's gimmick is that while other wrestlers don't sell his shin-taps and other lazy moves, the audience does. Even video clips of his matches usually have the title of "Orange Cassidy Destroys [Wrestler]!"

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