By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Pro Wrestling Sheet interview with Tommaso Ciampa
Interview conducted by Ryan Satin
Interview available at ProWrestlingSheet.com
Ciampa on NXT wrestlers being used in the crowd and whether he wants them at the In Your House event: “NXT wrestlers, no. PC students would be great. I don’t know that there’s rights and wrongs to a lot of this stuff. It’s all opinions. It’s wrestling. It’s ice cream. Because of our situation, we have at least 50 or 60 people in the Performance Center living in Orlando who aren’t ready to be on television as a performer. They’re just not. They can’t really do a whole lot right now with what’s going on. I think it’s awesome to have those people come on. It’s almost like that Japanese young boy style. Come to ringside, watch Kobayashi have this match. Feel it, feel the energy. Feel it all. Awesome idea. I don’t know that I like the idea of having NXT television superstars in the crowd…. “I don’t want to have people from Raw and Smackdown in the crowd while I’m wrestling. Maybe I’m young, but still have an old school feel to me. Just because there’s other options. I’d love to have some PC people back there, though. Great experience for you and it doesn’t diminish you in the slightest. That feels good to me.”
Ciampa on Karrion Kross: “He’s very big. There’s a lot of him that reminds me of AOP. That didn’t end so well for me. His music is unreal. His entrance is great. Something comes along with being the guy who becomes the test for people. I feel like that’s the position I’m in in this one. Not to say it will happen like this, but you have the match and people say ‘hey, how’d he do?’ It feels a lot like that. Man, is he big. He’s big! You know how some people say they’re strong? He’s strong.”
Ciampa on in-ring segment with Kross last week: “There’s a moment, if you watch the promo back, I don’t know exactly the wording that I chose, but I wanted to say ‘I wanted to come out here and look you eye-to-eye,’ but I think I just said ‘I want to come out and look you in the eyes’ because I’m like, I’m not eye-to-eye with you. I’m like eye-to-chest or eye-to-chin. I don’t want to go into all that, but that’s the thought process that I had while I’m speaking, like ‘what the hell’s going on up there?’ He definitely knows that it’s raining before I do.”
Ciampa on “One Final Beat” being filmed before the cinematic matches at WrestleMania, but airing after: “The thing that stunk is that we filmed it so early and then I saw the Firehouse thing … the ‘Taker match got insane feedback and stuff and I was like ‘oh, second people see ours’… It’s like the magic already went, in a weird way. You almost want to be first, in a sense. That was the part that actually bugged me the most. I was like, dammit, I wish somehow we aired first. Because we filmed first, I wish we aired first. Just because it’s like anything. It’s so hard. It’s like ‘cinematic is the best!’ and ‘oh, too much cinematic, it’s terrible!’ There’s been four of them, what do you mean?!”
Ciampa on saying he wasn’t willing to move to Raw or Smackdown: “I think it’s just a timing thing for me. Now, I’m a year and two months removed from the surgery. I feel great. If I feel great after two years and after three years, then it becomes a different conversation. I think going through the process and listening to my doctors, the idea of saying ‘oh, you’re going to do 200 dates a year.’ No. It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. I can’t do it and do it for five to ten years. Maybe I can do it for a year. It’s all situational to me. If my body continues to recuperate and do really well, knock on wood the neck’s doing great, if it’s doing great in three, four, five years and I’m able to build up enough equity where I can have a reduced schedule that I can handle, sure. It’s that never say never thing. I would never write anything off the table. But my goal is to build my legacy in NXT and, with my legacy, build what NXT is. I love that when I got to NXT, it was a couple Takeovers and now it’s more. It was on the [WWE] Network and now it’s USA. I’m part of this thing that’s growing and it just means a lot to me. The idea of us pulling off some kind of arena show or some sort of stadium show, you know 20,000, 40,000, 70,000. I would hate to miss all of that because I said that I want to go have this dream match one-off thing. I feel like, 20 years from now, if I can look back at a 15-year NXT career, it just means more to me. It means a lot to me to have that be something that, yeah, that was my stamp.”
Ciampa says he’s invited Edge to NXT: “I’ve invited Edge to NXT numerous times… Maybe not right now. But when we have fans again. When that music hits, I think they’re going to be very excited.”
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