Tommaso Ciampa: ‘AEW was head and shoulders where I wanted to be’
When Tommaso Ciampa entered free agency, he knew that AEW was where he wanted to end up.
The 40-year-old Ciampa debuted for AEW last week and has already won his first title for the promotion, defeating Mark Briscoe for the TNT Championship. His AEW deal came together “extremely fast” after departing WWE, but Ciampa told Bleacher Report that doing everything by the book was important to him. Once he was actually a free agent and contractually able to negotiate with other companies, Ciampa had his first conversations with AEW on the Tuesday before debuting on Dynamite.
“AEW was head and shoulders where I wanted to be,” he said. “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.”
Ciampa said he and his wife booked a family vacation to Blue Hill Ranch in Texas for the week his WWE contract was up. He knew AEW was in Texas that Wednesday and he would be able to drive to the show if he signed in time. If not, they could just continue to enjoy their vacation.
“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,” Ciampa said. “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 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.”
In AEW, Ciampa is determined to prove that he’s the best version of himself that he’s ever been. He has a TNT Championship defense coming up on Collision this Saturday in a three-way match against Claudio Castagnoli and Roderick Strong.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.