#How Orange Cassidy turned into AEW’s new breakout star

All Elite Wrestling ensured Orange Cassidy was lightly squeezed leading up to his Fyter Fest match against Chris Jericho.

The strategy was all part of the plan Tony Khan formulated that slowly turned the comedy wrestler into a viable “main event star” once the AEW president realized what he had.

“I was like, ‘oh my God, like that’s it,’” Khan told The Post in a phone interview. “He can do all these things and sometimes he doesn’t bring them out until later in a match. What we need to do is hide those things as long as possible. People don’t realize he can do those things and so the long-term idea was he would be like a manager, a character, a variety character on the show and then when the time was right, we’d put him in a big program, a pay-per-view. He would have his first match as a singles star and that would be the beginning of the story and the breakout.”

The 36-year-old Cassidy — currently billed as “freshly squeezed” in AEW — debuted on the independent scene in 2004. He was the masked Fire Ant and also JC Ryder before switching to his current gimmick in 2009. The New Jersey native has worked in Chikara, Evolve, Beyond and numerous other small promotions.

Khan admitted he wasn’t familiar with him when he first came into AEW. He made sure to spend some time talking to Cassidy – who never speaks on camera – at “AEW Dynamite” tapings and came away impressed.

“In terms of book smarts and intelligence, he’d be one of the top-five people in the company and his presentation is genius,” Khan said. “Once I started to talk to him and get to know him, I didn’t know that the person under that gimmick is actually incredibly intelligent, very knowledgeable, very capable.”

It made Khan go back and watch some of his matches before he became Orange Cassidy, and he said he was “shocked that they were the same two people.” He also saw him at a Pro Wrestling Guerilla show in California after Cassidy had signed and Khan became a bigger believer.

“The more I talked to him, the more I liked him and realized he does know what he’s doing,” Khan said. “There was a way he could be a very important person for you.”

Cassidy in a short 2017 YouTube documentary for “Comedy in Wrestling” said he created the character to be “different” than other wrestlers because “there are other people doing moonsaults better than me.”

“I don’t want to go and do what everybody else is doing on your show,” Cassidy said in the video. “I want to be that alternative.” He described the slow-moving and aloof Cassidy — who is known as The King of Sloth Style — as “a wrestler who doesn’t want to wrestle, whatever he can do just to get by is what he’s gonna do.” Even Cassidy’s signature thumbs up is lazy, lifting it only halfway.

But hidden behind that reluctance is an arsenal of quick-hitting moves and perfectly timed counters — many with his hands in his pockets. Khan tried to hide all of that for as long as possible, mostly having Cassidy as the manager for Best Friends, Chucky Taylor and Trent Beretta.

It didn’t always go perfectly.

“There was a six-man tag where he (Cassidy) did a couple of things and when he got through the curtain I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Khan said. “He’s like, ‘I did a stunner.’ You did the Stun Dog and I’m like ‘Save all that stuff man.’ ”

Cassidy, who debuted in AEW in August 2019, has only wrestled 11 traditional matches in the company. He was also in two battle royals and a ladder match. His first singles match was against PAC at the AEW Revolution pay-per-view in February. The idea to build to Orange Cassidy vs. PAC as his breakout match dates back to around the time of a six-man tag between PAC, Angelico and Jack Evans vs. Cassidy and Best Friends on “AEW Dark” in December of 2019, according to Khan.

“Once I figured out how capable he was, really tried to put something together for him that would allow him to camouflage his skill until the PAC match and then the PAC match was when we started to unleash all this stuff we had been holding back,” Khan said.

It was billed as “he’s gonna try” against PAC. Cassidy lost, but the outing received 3 ¾ stars from the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and gave fans a bigger glimpse of what he could really do in the ring.

Khan noted that Cassidy only raised his stock when AEW was dealing with a smaller roster during tapings at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He was able to work and “really stepped for us” in the boss’ eyes. That momentum carried him to his match with Jericho at Fyter Fest last week.

Jericho was also not a believer in Cassidy when he first signed with AEW. On his most recent “Saturday Night Special” on YouTube Live, Jericho said he initially thought Cassidy’s gimmick “was s–t” and he was “making a mockery of the business.”

Jericho quickly got over it.

In a February interview with The Post when talking about Cassidy and Marko Stunt, he had a “get your head out of your own ass Jericho and realize that over is over” moment. Cassidy was the first person he mentioned when asked who he wanted to still have a match against in AEW.

“This guy is so over, amazing,” Jericho said at the time. “I want a piece of this.”

When he did, it turned in one of the more talked about matches of the year – 4 ½ stars from the Wrestling Observer – and a match in Khan’s eyes that proves Cassidy is a “main event star.” Their feud is not over. After Cassidy had orange juice dumped on Jericho and his Inner Circle faction on Wednesday night’s Dynamite, the former AEW champion said there will be a rematch.

For now, Jericho hopes their first encounter proved Cassidy is the real deal.

“I really enjoyed the match,” Jericho said on his Saturday Night Special. “I think we really showed him in a different light so that all his haters and all of his critics can eat their words about this.”