Tommaso Ciampa: Crowd Reaction For My AEW Debut ‘Blew Me Away,’ It Came Together In Less Than 48 Hours
Candid comments from the new AEW signee.
After opting to let his WWE contract expire, Tommaso Ciampa arrived at All Elite Wrestling on the January 29th edition of Dynamite and confronted his first opponent, TNT Champion Mark Briscoe.
Ciampa has been making the media rounds following his AEW debut, and one of his chats was with SHAK Wrestling. Ciampa said it was a relief to hear the crowd pop for his arrival. He added that it ‘rocked him’ to his core.
“Uh, a relief,” Ciampa laughed as he responded to a question about the crowd pop he received for his AEW debut. “I mean, the anxiety I had going into it was just out of this world. I’ve had 30-minute, 45-minute main event matches, all of it and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt the anxiety that I felt last night, of just, I hope they care. Oh my Lord, do I hope they care, and it’s one of them funny things because I’ve heard people say this in the past: ‘I hope they remember me. Oh, I hope they care, I hope they know who I am’ and I’m always kind of like, ‘You’re Edge, you’re AJ Styles, you’re this, you’re that… Oh, dude, phoning in this line,’ and then I’m sitting there in this hidden locker room with just my wife and our little one and I’m just like, all I can think the whole time is, oh, please care. Just please care, and to stand there and in real time, especially because I didn’t have a match and there was not really a back-and-forth promo, right? You got nothing to stress about in that capacity so I’m really, in real time, able to just take everything in and listen and be in the moment, and I’m in the silhouette and I can feel, alright, right now, they’re just reacting because this looks cool, and ‘Psycho Killer’ comes up and I’m like, I think about 30 percent of them can connect the dots on this because I haven’t used Psycho Killer on a public stage for 12 years, and then, the name and the lights hit, and it rocked me to my core… Blew me away. Like, genuinely blew me away and then the aftermath, the reception online, interviews, text messages from my peers, from fans, everything, has just been overwhelmingly positive, which is nuts because we are so used to — we being all the performers in this industry — are so used to it being, at the very best, 50/50. At the very best. So to just get this 99 percent positive response has just been like, wait, what? Like, I wanna take it, I’ll take it, because I know it’s going away, so I’ll take it. But holy crap, unbelievable.”
Speaking about the details of how things came together, Ciampa said his AEW debut was pieced together in under 48 hours. Fightful Select reported that the contract was agreed to by Monday.
Ciampa stated that this is not a retirement tour. He opened up about the conversations that led to his arrival at AEW. He chatted with Q.T. Marshall and writer R.D. Evans. They reached out to see if Ciampa leaving WWE was legit. Ciampa said he’s been interested in joining AEW for several years.
“There’s probably the overwhelming and encompassing bucket list goal is final destination. That’s what I view this as, that’s my goal. That’s the conversation I think that I had Tuesday because wildly enough, this whole thing, we had less than 48 hours to put this thing together. But it was very much being adamant, this is not a cup of coffee. I’m not here to go on some sort of retirement tour. This isn’t some sort of, like, I got a couple of years left. I was like, ‘Man, I’m in the best shape of my life, physically.’ I have, I think, a warranted chip on my shoulder. I am insanely driven. I’ve had quite a bit of time to think about, envision, develop what this final chapter for me ideally would look like. From presentation, to gear, logos, trademarks, etcetera, and the fact that we were able to come together on such a time constraint and I was able to, I guess, just verbally put it all out there essentially. I’m a vision board guy. I’ve had this vision board developing for a long time, and it felt like over the last 48 hours, somebody came by and saw the vision board and just went, hey, yes to everything, and that doesn’t happen. It never has happened to me. It’s never happened in my entire life and I just kept looking at my wife like, this is real. This is nuts. We’re doing this. From each conversation, like, here’s Q.T. (Marshall) and R.D. Evans who you have a history with and, ‘Hey, we saw you’re leaving. Is that for real?’ ‘Yeah, it’s for real.’ ‘You retiring?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘You interested?’ ‘I’m more than interested.’ ‘Are you interested?’ ‘Yep,’ to, ‘Hey, let’s talk to Mikey Ruckus. We got 36 hours to put this music together. Let’s talk to Mike Mansury,’ who I have known in the past. ‘What’s this look like? How do we rift this thing together?’ The collaborative effort that was put forth by so many individuals on such a tight time constraint blows my mind, and we’re sitting in there and I’m putting pen to paper — well, I guess you don’t put pen to paper anymore. You put fake little stylus to iPad, and I’m just looking at my wife, like, holy crap. I’ve talked about this for years. My interest of doing this has been for at least two or three years. Last six months, I’ve been a foot out the door, and it was just one of them things where it’s like, do you bet on yourself? Do you just see this thing through and just find out if you’re right? Do you just stay put and take the safe bet? And I got a seven-year-old and I want her to know… You get one life. You get one life, you get one career, you get one chance at this and you just don’t wanna leave it with what if, and that’s what was the final determining factor, and man, am I happy that I made the decision…”
The first match of Ciampa’s AEW run is taking place on the January 31st Collision. He’ll be challenging Mark Briscoe for the TNT Championship.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit SHAK Wrestling with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
