Tommaso Ciampa explains decision to leave WWE, sign with AEW
Tommaso Ciampa explained his decision to leave WWE and sign with AEW during a recent interview.
Ciampa announced on January 21 that he would be leaving WWE when his contract expired. He debuted on AEW Dynamite on Wednesday and was revealed as Mark Briscoe’s opponent for Saturday’s episode of Collision.
Speaking with Rich Ucchino of The Takedown on SI.com, Ciampa said he had been leaning toward leaving WWE for some time before ultimately making the decision when his contract came due earlier this month.
“It’s something I’ve been leaning towards for quite some time,” Ciampa said. “I don’t know that I can say there’s one sole factor that led to it or caused it.”
“If I wrestled in the 90s, I’d wanna be a part of ECW… Early 2000s, you wanna be a part of Ring of Honor. I was lucky I got to do that a little bit. 2010s, I think for me at least, I wanted to be part of NXT Black and Gold. And when I looked at the landscape of professional wrestling in the 2020s… the answer was AEW, man. That’s what I want to be a part of.”
Ciampa also said he was unable to fully bring his Psycho Killer persona to WWE’s main roster:
“There were a lot of times I tried… and for one reason or another [over the years in WWE], it just wasn’t something that I could do. But for Tony [Khan] and the whole crew to just collaborate the way they did and have open arms, and see the vision and just allow it to breathe and have a chance, I’m already thinking six months, 12 months ahead on the evolution of the Psycho Killer.”
He continued to say that he’s better now than he was when he was portraying the character he did in the NXT Black and Gold era.
Ciampa said:
“For a long time, I had to listen to people tell me, not so much directly to my face but more so online, that 2018 was prime Ciampa. I’m a hundred times better now than I was then. That was nothing. That was absolutely nothing.”
“I finally have a shot to find out if I’m as good as I think I am,” he continued.
Ciampa also discusses his upcoming match with Mark Briscoe during the interview. It is available in its entirety on SI.com here.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.