Tommaso Ciampa Knows There Is A Backstage Spot For Him But Isn’t Ready To Stop Competing Just Yet
WWE star and former two-time NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa recently joined Insight With Chris Van Vilet to discuss his future with the company, where the Psycho Killer touches on possibly taking on a role backstage. Check out what Ciampa had to say on that subject, as well as his thoughts on his mistimed main roster call-up in 2019, below.
Talks his potential return to NXT and how he isn’t ready to take on a coaching role just yet:
Performance-wise I don’t think so. I think there’s a door that’s very open for guys like myself and Johnny because of loyalty because of the way we handle ourselves outside of the ring, professionalism and stuff that like there’s a spot producing coaching something. Yeah, I’m just not done performing. Like, physically. I know, my body sometimes just tells me like, hey, stop. But really, mentally, I’m not anywhere close. So like that wouldn’t. Before I would do something like that. The option would be well, no, it’s the Ring of Honor option. It’s the I think I can do this thing that’s really special. I’m gonna go do it. Yeah, like, Please give me the opportunity to do it here. But if not, I’m still gonna go do it.
On his mistimed main roster call-up back in 2019:
So here’s the scenario. I’m like three matches away from TakeOver in New York. I gotta get through a couple more NXT tapings. And I’m like, I know I can get there. I think I have one more left and this is great. I’m gonna get there. At the same time, completely randomly, me Ricochet, Aleister and Johnny get called up to the main roster. And I’m sitting there going, I have a broken neck that 100% needs surgery. The surgery date is literally already set, early April. Maybe I shouldn’t go do extra stuff. So no one knows what’s going on. It’s confusing. So I’m like, I must be the mouthpiece. We must be coming in as a group of NXT invaders and I must be the mouthpiece. This is fine. It’ll be fine. We get there, we don’t hear much all of a sudden, like I think Johnny and I have like a tag match with someone. I don’t know if it’s The Bar or Revival. And we’re like in a feud. And we’re like, what? And I wish I kept saying to myself, just don’t do this. Tell them no, like, go have a man-to-man conversation with Vince and explain to him passionately, why you think this is a bad idea. And then the other part of me was like, I mean, this is just your job, and they’re the boss and then they know what they want and just go to your job. So I’m gonna do my job, you know, and we were on Raw, SmackDown, flew back, did the taping, Raw, SmackDown. It was just a bizarre like, for me, like just sitting there going like, I know, I need surgery. Why am I tripling my workload? I just gotta get to this thing. And we’re tagging and this is weird. So my regret of it is like, I just wish, seeing how my conversation with Vince went when I finally met him. I was like, I’m pretty sure if I explained it he would have just been like, I didn’t know that. Because, you know, not everything’s communicated. Yeah, I’m fairly certain he would have just gone I wasn’t aware, forget it. And but I didn’t I didn’t do it. I didn’t initiate the conversation, you know, and I just did. So that’s the regret because I’m like, if TakeOver New York happens, we have that moment Johnny wins the title, and that feud ends the way it’s supposed to. And because it didn’t happen, the frickin feud never ended. You know, it just never had its ending, it just kind of kept having hiccups.
Full interview is below.
