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The next main event of ROH on HDNet will feature Claudio Castagnoli vs. Brent Albright, who had a brief run in WWE as Gunner Scott. Both won enhancement matches in the first TV taping, setting them up to meet in a TV main event taped at the second taping.

It would have been nice to get a promo or angle to set up this match, but ROH apparently didn't run any angles at the first two tapings and all of the promos to date have been for matches later in the same show that the promo was aired on.

Both of these guys are worthy of an article introducing them to new ROH viewers, but I'll go with Castagnoli because he's been around ROH longer and involved in some bigger angles.

- Debut: Castagnoli debuted for ROH on July 16, 2005, at Fate of an Angel in Woodbridge, Connecticut. He lost the opening match to Nigel McGuiness who, at the time, was embroiled in a great feud with Colt Cabana.

This event happened during the famous "Summer of Punk," a summer-long angle where ROH let it be known that C.M. Punk was leaving for WWE, then put the World Title on Punk, turned him heel, and had the top babyfaces in the company chase him to keep him from taking the title with him to WWE.

- Immediate Push: Castagnoli had good timing because he arrived in ROH just as Punk, Spanky (a/k/a The Brian Kendrick), and James Gibson (a/k/a Jamie Noble) were leaving for WWE. This opened up spots for new blood to be moved up the card. On October 1, at Joe vs. Kobashi in Manhattan, Castagnoli got a big upset win in the opening match over Colt Cabana to shoot him up the card.

This shows how, in a well-booked promotion, jobbing clean does not have to weaken a top star. Cabana was not hurt by losing to Castagnoli and continued as a top star in ROH, while the win gave Castagnoli the credibility to move from opening matches to more important matches further up the card.

- Feud with Nigel McGuinness over the Pure Title: Castagnoli's next big win was a non-title match over Nigel McGuinness, who had recently won the ROH Pure Title from Samoa Joe. This earned Castagnoli a title shot against McGuinness at Showdown in Motown on November 4 in Detroit. The two would battle over the Pure Title into March 2006 in a feud that cemented McGuiness as a top heel in the company thanks to his constant cheating to keep the title from Castagnoli. McGuinness's heel tactics transferred a lot of sympathy to Castagnoli and established Castagnoli as a babyface just in time for his big turn.

- Major Role in the ROH-CZW Feud: The ROH-CZW feud was a great invasion angle that ran through the first half of 2006. A group of CZW wrestlers led by Chris Hero would crash ROH events. One of the sub-plots of the feud was the question of Castagnoli's loyalty, because he was a ROH wrestler but Hero was his long time tag team partner in CZW and other promotions around the world. After swearing he was loyal ROH, Castagnoli betrayed ROH at The 100th Show in a very well-executed heel turn. This instantly made Castagnoli a huge heel, and he was a leading member of the CZW faction for the rest of the angle.

- Tag Team Run with Chris Hero: After the CZW feud ran its course, Castagnoli settled in as a mid-card heel for a few months. There was an angle that August where the ROH World Tag Team title belts, then held by Austin Aries and Roderick Strong, were stolen and the culprits were eventually revealed to be Castagnoli and Hero (who, as a tag team, called themselves The Kings of Wrestling). To get their hands of Castagnoli and Hero, Aries and Strong gave them a title shot at Glory By Honor V, Night 2 in Manhattan.

Castagnoli and Hero shockingly won the titles, ending Aries and Strong's almost ten-month reign, after Castagnoli illegally used his metal Haliburton briefcase as a weapon against Aries.

Castagnoli and Hero's tag team title run was mostly an angle to explain Hero's full-time return to ROH after the CZW feud. They would drop the belts a short time later to Christopher Daniels and Matt Sydal (a/k/a Evan Bourne in WWE), and continue as a mid card tag team act in ROH.

- Return to Singles Competition in 2007: The Kings of Wrestling split up when Castagnoli briefly left for WWE. The angle to explain his departure involved Super Agent Larry Sweeney signing Hero to a contract but rejecting Castagnoli, which ended the Kings of Wrestling and seemingly ousted Castagnoli from ROH. For reasons that remain unclear to this day, Castagnoli did not ultimately sign with WWE as expected as returned to ROH just a few weeks later.

Back to being a babyface after the angle with Sweeney and Hero, he spent most of 2007 feuding with Sweeney's faction, called Sweet and Sour Inc. He also got a push into World Title contention in the summer and had a very good title match against Takeshi Morishima at Death Before Dishonor, Night One on August 10 in Boston.

- Late 2008 Heel Turn: Claudio continued along as an upper-mid-card babyface in 2008, rotating in and out of title contention. In an attempt to freshen up his character, he turned back heel late in the year and unveiled a new "very European" attitude. Claudio will therefore be the heel against the babyface Albright in HDNet match.

Claudio has a charismatic ring presence and is a dependably good worker in the ring. He is capable of raising his game and having outstanding matches when he is in the ring with world class workers like Nigel McGuiness and Bryan Danielson. Against another good-but-not-great worker like Albright, I expect a decent TV main event this weekend but not a match to the level of Aries vs. Danielson two weeks ago.

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