Tommaso Ciampa Says He Was Leaning Towards Leaving WWE For ‘Quite Some Time’

Tommaso Ciampa was moved to the alumni section on the WWE roster page on January 27, indicating his departure from the company. On January 21, Ciampa confirmed that his WWE contract was set to expire and that he would be leaving the company.

He had been with WWE since 2015, winning the NXT Title, NXT Tag Team Titles, and WWE Tag Team Titles. He was previously with ROH before signing with WWE.

On Wednesday, he made his AEW debut on Dynamite.

Speaking to Rick Ucchino of Sports Illustrated, Ciampa explained his decision to leave WWE.

“It’s something I’ve been leaning towards for quite some time. I don’t know that I can say there’s one sole factor that led to it or caused it. I think it’s one of those things when your contract is coming to an end, you naturally have discussions.

“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. 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 is set to challenge Mark Briscoe for the AEW TNT Championship on Saturday’s Collision.

Fans can find Fightfu’s coverage of AEW Dynamite here.