Powerhouse Hobbs Reflects On His Career Growth Since His First Loss To Orange Cassidy In 2020

Will Hobbs has come a long way since July 2020.

AEW Dark On July 7, 2020, featured the first official match between Powerhouse Hobbs and Orange Cassidy. In reality, it wasn’t much of a match at all. Will Hobbs was still trying to find his way on AEW programming and Orange Cassidy was in the middle of a major rivalry with Chris Jericho. This first encounter was nothing more than Cassidy evading Hobbs’ first attempt at offense, connecting with his Orange Punch, and getting a victory.

Now, Powerhouse Hobbs, on the latest episode of the Fightful Grapsody podcast, reflected on his first match with Orange Cassidy and how he knew at the time that putting over Orange Cassidy strongly would at least land him in video packages promoting impending bouts between Cassidy and Jericho. 

“I’m no dummy here.. You look at that time when I went up against Orange Cassidy for the first time. Orange Cassidy was in a feud with the number one heel in wrestling, which was Chris Jericho. I knew, with my size, against Orange, I was going to be featured in a video package,” he recalled. “My job was to go out there and make his superman punch look so believable. When they had that promo package with Orange and Jericho for the Mimosa match, I counted myself maybe four or five times being superman punched. Why would I not want to go out and make someone else look good? In hindsight, that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

Powerhouse Hobbs talked about the reaction to the quick loss to Orange Cassidy with a great understanding of why he lost that way. Hobbs even noted that he had people apologizing to him, despite his understanding of why the match went down the way it did. Ultimately, Hobbs feels that he won in the end because of all the opportunities he’s had since then.

“I had people thanking me, saying, ‘Sorry.’ Don’t tell me sorry. I already know what was going to happen,” he said. “How did Orange Cassidy knockout then 276-pound dude with one punch and he’s half his size? Come on now. This is the number one baby(face), at the time, against the number one heel. Why would I be mad at that? I flew all the way across the country to lose in 12 seconds, okay, whatever.

“Look what the outcome is,” Hobbs continued. “Look how many opportunities I’ve had. Look how many times I’ve knocked things out of the park. I’ve wrestled Christian Cage, Brian Cage twice, Hangman Adam Page, CM Punk in his debut back on TV, I’ve main evented Rampage with Keith Lee and was in a featured tag match in New Orleans that had people jumping out of their seats.”

Hobbs will both be looking to achieve another career milestone this weekend. He will be going after championship gold on Sunday at AEW Double or Nothing when he teams with Ricky Starks to challenge Jungle Boy & Luchusaurus for the AEW Tag Team Titles in a triple threat bout that also features Swerve Strickland & Keith Lee. 

Grapsody airs every Saturday at noon ET on Fightful’s YouTube channel.