Tommaso Ciampa recently spoke candidly about the financial and personal factors that led to his decision to join AEW following the expiration of his WWE contract.
Appearing on Close Up with Renee Paquette, Ciampa explained that beyond creative fulfillment, the move came down to timing, stability, and being in the right place financially to take a calculated risk.
“Every performer, specifically people who’ve come up through the independent scene, you love the business. And the thing you really genuinely want is for it to love you back. And like I’ve been told numerous times, this isn’t the business. The business doesn’t love you back,” Ciampa said. “But like I’m an optimist, so like I think it’s not going to love you back 100% of the time. But those moments when it does, like we thrive for that. So that’s what I feel like.”
Ciampa admitted that in recent years, he had not felt that connection as strongly. “So it’s a lot of that going on right now for me, where it’s like, ‘oh man, I haven’t felt loved back for a bit.’ So that was big, but at home, honestly, it was less about just looking forward to, ‘oh, we’re doing this AEW thing’ because it was a ton of uncertainty.”
He revealed that discussions about leaving WWE had been happening for far longer than fans may realize. “Our decision to move on. We talked about that for months. I might even say a couple years, realistically. That’s a big thing, right?”
Ciampa emphasized that financial readiness played a major role in his timing. When he originally left NXT to join WWE’s main roster, he and his family were not in a position to gamble on themselves.
“To be honest, that’s the biggest thing that you start to go is like we are getting a definitive income, it’s a salary. And you know what the independent scene’s like, you understand the travel if you start to go to different countries to do this and stuff, and what’s that impact on Willow, what’s the impact on my wife?”
He continued: “When I left NXT to make the move to the main roster. Financially, we were not ready to do that, and we knew it. So there was not really a question of, ‘okay, let’s take a risk. Let’s bet on ourselves.’ We got at that time a three-year-old, now a seven-year-old. It just wasn’t in the cards. But now I’m starting to go, yeah, I think we are at the point financially, let’s take the risk.”
After his WWE contract expired earlier this year, Ciampa filed a trademark for “Psycho Killer” and made his AEW debut on the January 28 episode of Dynamite. He quickly made an impact, defeating Mark Briscoe to capture the TNT Championship in his first major appearance.
Ciampa’s comments offer insight into the business realities behind major career moves, showing that for many performers, the decision isn’t just about creative freedom — it’s about timing, security, and knowing when the risk is finally worth taking.
