AEW TNT Champion Tommaso Ciampa recently spoke with Bleacher Report about his AEW debut, the overwhelming fan response, and how quickly his transition to All Elite Wrestling came together.
Ciampa said, “Dude, insane, right? I think for the entirety of my career, I’ve heard people say they come back from an injury or whatever it is and say, ‘I hope people remember,’ or ‘I hope people care.’ And I’ve always kind of thought, ‘Come on, you know they’re going to care. You’re just saying that.’ But being in that position for the first time ever, where I’m a surprise, and there’s a production and all this stuff, I couldn’t help but talk to my wife constantly. I’m going, ‘God, I really hope they care. I really, really hope they care.’ And it blew my mind to hear the response and just feel the energy in that room. It’s something I haven’t felt in a long time, man, just outrageous. And then to see the aftermath, whether it was social media or different outlets, text messages. The outpouring of love and support. When you put yourself out there in any entertainment aspect, you’re giving a lot of yourself to people for them to judge you and for them to make opinions and whatever it be, so to get the kind of support that I’ve gotten has been one of the coolest feelings of my entire career.”
On how quickly his AEW deal came together:
“AEW was head and shoulders where I wanted to be. I take everything pretty seriously when it comes to doing it by the book. And with my contract coming up the way it was, I was like, ‘Well, I can’t really have a conversation right now, so let me just wait this out.’ I did put the statement out a week early because I wanted to, one, see what the response was online and in the industry, and two, I wanted people to go, ‘Oh, so that weird report that came out a month ago, there’s some truth to that.’ So that was definitely on purpose. When my wife and I had the conversation about what’s next, and obviously we’re done here with WWE, and we’re going to move on and bet on ourselves and figure out this next chapter. A big conversation was AEW and how do I get there. So we started to look at where they are after my contract is up, and we saw Texas. Long story short, my wife for five years now has been eyeing up Blue Hill Ranch in Texas. It’s like this giraffe safari where you get to have all these awesome animal experiences. And we just never had the time to come out there. So I was like, ‘Why don’t we just book a family vacation, and if things happen to work out and we can shock the world and show up two days later, we’re a two-hour drive away. And if it doesn’t work out, we still have this awesome family vacation.’ And sure enough, it worked out fast. Tuesday I had a couple of quick conversations with QT Marshall and RD Evans, who used to work with me in ROH. We always had great chemistry, and he’s a writer now. This thing for worked out extremely fast. Faster than I would have ever guessed. I met Tony [Khan] for the first time Wednesday. His passion is contagious. His love for his roster, his fanbase, for AEW is just beaming off him. So we had a very quick conversation, and it just felt really right.”
On his love for The Briscoes:
“To touch on Mark Briscoe, I’ve got the utmost respect for him, Jay, as well, obviously. I loved them in Ring of Honor. They were locker room leaders. They were lead-by-example guys. They delivered at all times. What Mark has been able to do as a singles wrestler blows my mind. He is arguably the most likable babyface in professional wrestling. I had a couple of family members there on Wednesday who saw him for the first time, and that’s all they could talk about. The idea that that’s the first opponent, I don’t think I could have personally picked one better.”
