Claudio Castagnoli was born in Lucerne, Switzerland and participated in a multitude of different sports as a youth (his 6 ft 5 in 230 lb. frame is built for athletics). He got into the world of professional wrestling around Christmas time in 2000 and worked for numerous independent promotions. Castagnoli’s most well-known independent stints came with ROH (Ring of Honor), PWG (Pro Wrestling Guerilla), CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling), and Pro Wrestling Noah, all under his biological name. He has spent an extensive amount of time competing in the tag team division for every company he’s worked for over the years.
Castagnoli won numerous independent tag team titles with Chris Hero (Kassius Ohno, who was one of the 5 men who trained him). Cesaro is also a seven-time tag team champion in WWE with three different partners. The only company that has trusted Castagnoli to be a world champion and carried the company as its face is PWG. This man is easily worth of being world champion for any company, but it has just taken a while for him to cultivate the level of security within himself that Vince McMahon – or any promoter – looks for.
We are all on our own journey in this life, so we all evolve at our own unique rate – it may not be exactly when we want which is somewhat frustrating at times because that level of maturity and security is much easier to intellectually understand and to embody in everyday life.
Cesaro is widely regarded as one of the best performers in the world, which I imagine is extremely rewarding to the man – and he might feel a sense of responsibility to deliver on that reputation every single night by having the best, or one of the best, matches of the night. This reputation can serve to be either pressure-inducing or motivation to deliver. He took his wrestling style from many old-school wrestlers including Bob Backlund and Bruno Sammartino just to name a few.
Castagnoli first started getting serious about professional wrestling at age 19 and his first trainer was fellow Swiss wrestler SigMasta Rappo. He debuted on Christmas Eve in 2000 for Westside Xtreme Wrestling based in Germany – his very first gimmick was that of a Japanese man, but it was quickly changed to a Swiss banker and formed a tag team with Ares (not Austin Aries) known as Swiss Money Holding. Castagnoli was also trained by Dave Taylor in England. Swiss Money Holding was invited to perform in the United States by Chris Hero and Mike Quackenbush.
In Castagnoli’s first try at the green card lottery, he received a permanent Visa and was allowed to move to the United States full-time and began working on a regular basis for ROH and Chikara (co – founded by Mike Quackenbush who also trained him). This officially ended the tag team Swiss Money Holding because Ares stayed in Switzerland but continued the tag team with a different partner. In 2006 with partner Chris Hero, Castagnoli became one half of the inaugural Chikara Campeones de Parejas.
Castagnoli also made his debut in 2004 for Combat Zone Wrestling and was with the company through 2006, winning the CZW World Tag Team Championship with Chris Hero – in late 2006, Castagnoli and Hero held the tag team titles of three major independent promotions in America simultaneously (CZW, ROH, and Chikara).
In November 2006 Castagnoli left those three independent companies because he signed a developmental contract with WWE. He was featured in a backstage segment as a police officer not too long before that and also had a successful run for Deep South Wrestling but was released from WWE soon after. He returned to Chikara in February 2007 and began feuding with Chris Hero not long after. In 2008 Castagnoli had a fantastic rivalry with Brodie Lee (who passed away a month ago). Everyone whose life Jon Huber touched became a better person for it, which included the first steel cage match in Chikara history.
In Ring of Honor, after initially teasing a departure for WWE in 2006, Claudio wrestled on the company’s first Pay-Per-View Respect is Earned on May 12, 2007 by teaming with Matt Sydal to challenge the Briscoe Brothers for the ROH World Tag Team Championship. Castagnoli was permitted to challenge for the titles in a rematch with a different partner but was still unsuccessful with Chris Hero. Later in 2007 he achieved success as a singles competitor by winning Ring of Honor’s Race to the Top Tournament, a 16-man, 2-night event.
He defeated El Generico in the finals to win the tournament and subsequently challenged Takeshi Morishima for the ROH World Championship in August 2007 unsuccessfully. Castagnoli faced Chris Hero at the second ROH Pay-Per-View Rising Above on December 29, 2007, a match he won a year after their tag team split. On June 28, 2008, he got the biggest singles victory of his career to that point by defeating Bryan Danielson in their first ROH meeting. One month later he unsuccessfully challenged Nigel McGuinness for the ROH World Championship in his second match challenging for the title. Castagnoli turned heel shortly after that, joined the stable Embassy and began feuding with Brent Albright.
At ROH’s first live Pay-Per-View at the end of 2009, Final Battle, the Kings of Wrestling Claudio Castagnoli and Chris Hero, reunited by attacking the ROH World Tag Team Champions the Briscoe Brothers. Several months later in April 2010 the Kings of Wrestling became ROH World Tag Team Champions for a second time. On January 4, 2011, Castagnoli and Hero became the longest-reigning ROH World Tag Team Champions, breaking the record previously set by the Briscoe Brothers. In April 2011 the Kings of Wrestling lost the titles to Charlie Haas and Shelton Benjamin, ending their reign at 363 days.
Castagnoli also had multiple stints with PWG from 2005 – 2008 and 2010 – 2011. He won his first major singles title in the United States in 2010 by winning the PWG World Championship. 2010 was a big year for Claudio with this company because he was a semi-finalist in his third Battle of Los Angeles Tournament – defeating Ricochet and Roderick Strong before losing to the eventual winner Joey Ryan. Ryan should have earned a championship match for the PWG World Championship, but because the champion was stripped the four semi-finalists were placed in a match to determine the champion (which Castagnoli won). He lost the PWG World Championship to Kevin Steen after 287 days, a successful run with the title.
This man is extremely well-traveled and has wrestled all around the world for so many different promotions, which is a testament to how he has the ability to get along with nearly everyone across the world from all kinds of different backgrounds. It’s great to have that extreme amount of experiences throughout one’s life, and it has most likely benefited Claudio Castagnoli greatly as a human being and made him much more well-rounded. No wonder he speaks five different languages – he needed to in order to be able to operate in so many different nations.
Castagnoli became the first two-time Campeon de Parejas with Chikara in 2010 (this time with his Swiss Money Holding partner Ares). Later that same year, these two men teamed with Tursas to win the King of Trios tournament.
He signed a contract with WWE in September 2011 and was sent down to their developmental territory at the time Florida Championship Wrestling (which would eventually become NXT) under the new ring name Antonio Cesaro. Things started moving pretty quickly for Cesaro as he went on a winning streak to gain momentum, and he was called up to the main roster in April 2012. Antonio Cesaro won the United States Championship from Santino Marella on the SummerSlam pre-show 2012 and held the title until April 15, 2013 when he lost it to Kofi Kingston. The most notable event during Cesaro’s first title-reign in WWE came in the 2013 Royal Rumble match when he eliminated Daniel Bryan.
Ironically – as I write this – we are heading into the Royal Rumble and Cesaro has just recently beaten Daniel Bryan. Anyway, a nine-month run with a title is not a bad way to start one’s tenure in WWE. In 2013 Antonio Cesaro began a feud with Sami Zayn that lasted until the first NXT Takeover event in February 2014 and produced some incredible matches (Zayn, the former El Generico on the indies, needs to get back to this style because he is at his best from a wrestling standpoint). Combined this match style with his level of character development, which came into its own in 2020, and there is definitely something there.
Cesaro was paired with Zeb Colter as his manager and Jack Swagger as his tag team partner. Together, Cesaro and Swagger were known as The Real Americans (partially because Cesaro claimed he was superior to everyone because he was a legal immigrant). The Real Americans never became WWE Tag Team Champions, but the Cesaro section was organically created by the WWE universe in late 2013 at least partially because of this tag team.
His ring name was also shortened in February 2014 to take away his first name Antonio (Mr. McMahon has shortened the names of numerous superstars to make them more marketable so people will remember). After being unsuccessful in the Elimination Chamber and wrapping up the storyline with Sami Zayn at the first ever NXT Takeover Arrival on February 27, Cesaro won the inaugural Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal by the body slamming Big Show out of the ring, which looked reminiscent of Hulk Hogan doing the same thing to Andre at WrestleMania III. Cesaro described this moment at WrestleMania 30 as “the highlight of my career” in 2015.
Cesaro became a Paul Heyman guy in April 2014 but the partnership was short-lived as it ended in July, however it did lead to Cesaro challenging Sheamus for the United States Championship (leading to the formation of The Bar a couple years later) and challenging unsuccessfully for the vacant WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the 2014 Money in the Bank ladder match. Paul Heyman gave Cesaro that little bit of extra charisma on the microphone he had not cultivated yet.
At one point, he was told to stop using the Cesaro Swing because it was making him too popular and WWE did not want fans cheering a heel. Unfortunately, Mr. McMahon did not view him as being 100% over, but to McMahon’s credit he did not give up. The Swiss Superman was put in a tag team with Tyson Kidd, and the team became tag team champions within a couple months, forming in December 2014 and becoming champions in February 2015 at Fastlane 2015 by dethroning The Usos. They lost the titles at Extreme Rules 2015 to The New Day, and unfortunately not too long after this Tyson Kidd was sidelined for what was projected to be over a year with a legitimate spinal injury thus ending the partnership between he and Cesaro.
Cesaro’s greatest moment in 2015 came in early July when he answered John Cena’s opening challenge for the United States Championship. He was unsuccessful but was put over by Cena after a fantastic match. A few months later in November 2015, Cesaro participated in a tournament to determine the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion (the champion Seth Rollins suffered a severe knee injury at a house show in Dublin, Ireland). Cesaro made it to the semi-finals of the tournament but needed to leave WWE for a while to repair a torn rotator cuff that he sustained a few months prior and had dealt with until that point. This kept him out of action for four-six months and forced him to miss WrestleMania 32.
He returned to Monday Night RAW the night after Mania 32 with a new James Bond style entrance with a tear-away suit and served as a replacement in the Fatal 4-Way match to determine the new number one contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship – which was won by AJ Styles. At Extreme Rules on May 22, 2016, Cesaro, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and Intercontinental Champion The Miz participated in a critically acclaimed Fatal 4-Way match for the title. In a shoot-style interview after the WWE draft in 2016, Cesaro legitimately went off-script and talked about how he was surprised he was not drafted to the more wrestling-oriented SmackDown and thought he would be a better fit over there.
Cesaro stayed on RAW, and it worked out for the best because he began an extremely physical Best of Seven Series with Sheamus which culminated in September 2016. As a result, Mick Foley made them a tag team and they won the RAW Tag Team titles at Roadblock: End of the Line (ending the second reign of The New Day that lasted over a year). Cesaro and Sheamus were transitional champions as they only had the titles for a month before losing them on the Royal Rumble kickoff show in 2017 to Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson and failing to regain the titles at WrestleMania 33 when The Hardy Boyz returned to WWE in April 2017.
Cesaro and Sheamus began to be referred to as The Bar at Payback 2017 when they turned heel by attacking The Hardy Boyz. Their entrance and they began to wear matching gear. The Bar defeated The Hardy Boyz at Extreme Rules in June for the RAW Tag Team Championship, making Cesaro a three-time tag team champion in WWE with two different partners. The Bar lost the titles to Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose at SummerSlam 2017 in which Cesaro came up with some great improvisation as a heel by popping the WWE universe’s beachball. In a rematch with the same team, Cesaro received praise even though The Bar did not regain the titles because he was able to keep going in the match despite losing some teeth when he was shot into the turnbuckle.
At WrestleMania 34 The Bar lost the tag titles to Braun Strowman and a child named Nicholas, which had to make that little boy’s night – he probably still talks about it like it was yesterday. The Bar were drafted to SmackDown in 2018 and became tag team champions on that brand for the fifth and final time as a team. They dropped the titles to Shane McMahon and The Miz at Royal Rumble 2019 and went on a losing streak in February and March right before WrestleMania 35 – losing to DIY, Ricochet and Aleister Black, The Hardy Boyz as well as The New Day.
Sheamus had been suffering from spinal stenosis for several years and it was finally catching up to him. He originally thought he might have to retire after WrestleMania 35, so he wanted to put over as many teams as possible before that because he had the self-awareness to know The Bar was over and a victory over them would significantly benefit a rising tag team. That is tradition in wrestling – put over young guys on your way out of the business to ensure success for the next generation and continue the legacy of the wrestling business.
Needless to say, The Bar disbanded after Mania 35 in April 2019, and he had multiple critically acclaimed matches with Ricochet on RAW. Cesaro was drafted to SmackDown in October 2019 and begin a storyline with Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura in which Zayn won the Intercontinental Championship from Braun Strowman in a 3–on–1 handicap match with assistance from the other two men. Zayn defended the IC title against Daniel Bryan successfully at WrestleMania 36 in April 2020 and, as a supplemental match from that same storyline, Cesaro (one of Zayn’s sidekicks) wrestled Drew Gulak (Bryan’s coach).
Zayn went in his own direction after Mania, but Cesaro and Nakamura stayed together as a tag team. They won the SmackDown Tag Team Titles from The New Day in July at The Horror Show at Extreme Rules. Kofi Kingston was injured in this match due to being put through two tables, sparking Big E’s current singles run (in which he is the current Intercontinental Champion). The New Day won the title back in October 2020, and Cesaro and Shinsuke have since gone their separate ways. Nakamura turned babyface in a gauntlet match and is currently involved in a rivalry with Roman Reigns and his cousin Jey Uso, while The Swiss Cyborg remained heel and recently earned the biggest victory of his WWE career over Daniel Bryan in January 2021.