During a recent interview with Inside the Ropes, Tommaso Ciampa commented on changing his stance on never moving to RAW and SmackDown, working in WWE NXT, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On his stance against moving to RAW or SmackDown: “Yeah, well I’m a year and a half out of surgery now. So I feel my stance getting slightly more laid back on it, but it’s one of those things were like, I don’t want to get too comfortable with ‘Oh, my neck feels great.’ Because I just know it, you’re one mistake away, you’re one bump away from it not feeling great. Right now I feel great, I mean, I’ve been on a limited schedule. I came back [with] such a slow, progreessive pace of live events. And then when I started to hit a lot of live events, knock on wood I felt pretty good. Right now I feel great, but again, I just haven’t taken on a very hard load. So I try not to fool myself. It’s one of those like, ‘Hey, I probably can’t do 250 days a year. Wait, but I feel great even this many dates.’ Would I feel great if I did 250? Probably not. And honestly, a lot of it has to do with travel, too. The travel is the hardest port sometimes for me, if I have a long travel and then I have to warm up for a match and get on a bus or a car, or a flight. That part is very difficult, that cool down and then repeat process.”
On what it would take for him to want to move brands: “So I think as far as like, a main roster run or anything goes, to me it’s just one of those things like, if somebody came to me with the right offer of saying, ‘We’re gonna limit your schedule,’ anything’s possible. Because it has nothing to do with the brand or anything. I mean, we’re all part of WWE. It’s just, it’s literally just for me, the longevity of my career. And I want — like, legacy is very important to me at this stage. And the longer I can do this and the more matches I can have that are meaningful and on a big platform the better. So I would rather have as many of those for as long as I can as possible.”
