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Tommaso Ciampa on Triple H, DIY, Johnny Gargano, Being Muhammad Hassan's Lawyer
Tommaso Ciampa (@ciampawwe) is a professional wrestler with WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Ontario, CA to talk about his incredible matched in NXT, winning the NXT Championship twice, being trained by Killer Kowalski who also trained Triple H, his friendship and rivalry with Johnny Gargano and their tag team DIY, making his WWE debut in 2005 and playing Muhammad Hassan's lawyer, getting chokeslammed by The Undertaker, how his work in Ring Of Honor got him on WWE's radar, the psychology of being a heel, his diet and workout plan with our mutual friend nutritionist AJ Simms (@cementfactory), being a girl dad and much more!
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Quote I'm thinking about:
"The quickest way to succeed is to start now and figure it out as you go. You can’t learn to drive in a parked car."
"Similar to being in the right place with Chaotic, they called up the promoter at the time Jamie and they said hey, we need, which is a weird suggestion from WWE for what we need, but we need guys under six foot tall, who look like they could be like fresh out of law school. So I forget how they worded it but because it was for Hassan and Daivari like they wanted you to have a certain look, I think their wording was. So three of us got sent it was me this kid Matt Logan and this kid Chase I'm I want to say maybe I'm like at that time six months older than Matt younger than Chase. But we didn't have anyone who was like 20, which is just so weird now thinking about wrestling but we didn't have anyone who was 26-30. It was all kids and we all went there. I borrowed my brother's suit because I didn't have one and the three of us are in catering and John Laurinaitis comes in he just like looks at us and he's like, Yeah, I think he's gonna do, and that was the end of that. You're like, Okay, I didn't know exactly what we're there for. And then all of a sudden, like it was the whirlwind of a day. Stephanie McMahon comes up to me, next thing I know, takes me for a tour. And I'm like, What the heck is going on? So like an individual tour. This is the backstage, this is where we do this this is that and I remember like to this day her just say it's just like the independents just with like, a lot more money behind it, and but she was the nicest person ever. And I was like, This is crazy. And then finally, like, you know, I did the whole thing and stuff and they were like, you know, you're gonna read this, this script and you have a writer Ed Koskey, who still like to this day with the company head writer. And they kind of let it slip to me later in the day as the day went on there. This is super important. Like, at that time, they did something with Hassan. I forget what it was, but it was like, I want to say something happened with terrorist attacks too and UPN was under crazy heat."
"Yeah, he disappeared after this, but they were like you have to do an apology for his actions last week. And it has to come off as sincere and real because we're actually apologising to the network on live TV, because that's what they requested. And it was just bizarre because in my head at this point, I'm like, with Jamie the promoter. I'm like, why didn't they just hire an actor? Why didn’t they hire somebody professional? And I was like, This is so bizarre. He's like, you know, but I was a promo guy I've always been a promo guy, he’s like it's just like your penmanship promo, just go do whatever your penmanship problems. I'm like, Thank God, I have this script. I can read it and like they were like, you're reading it. You don't have to memorise it. So I like, okay, and then I did. I did an in-ring rehearsal with Undertaker, with Hunter, Steph and Vince and everybody watching me."
"It was likely when I read the script type of thing. And because the day was insanity, like because you did the in-ring thing. Then I had to go. I remember being outside Vince's office because I passed that test. And now I had to go read it for him in his office, just us and you hear screaming and a door slam. And Michael Hayes looks at me. And he's like, What are you here for? And I tell him he's like, You got no f*cking chance kid, walks away, hahaha. I'm like, Oh, God. I walk into Vince's office and like, I'm super nervous Vince's there, he’s super polite. And then Hunter just walks out. And he's making muscle milk shakes. And he's like, and I don't know why. But like the jock in me was just like, oh, this is just a couple of dudes you just worked out, it just like eased me completely. So I read the thing for tape for Vince. He took one word out because I couldn’t pronounce it properly. Put in a different word. It was one of those days where you're just like, what is happening like, by the time I got in there with Taker and did it like, even that was surreal. Because I want to say gives me a chokeslam and then a tombstone. He gives me the chokeslam. And we used to have this thing where we'd go for we called them treats. We'd go every day after class. It was just to the 99 it was food. We'd say treats. And we always like to say when we left each other was thank you, Daddy. Hi, Daddy. That was our thing. I'm not kidding you at all. He chokeslams me. And he's picking me up he goes, Nice and easy, Daddy. Even that moment, like his crotch about to take a Tombstone. So like laughing and smiling to myself. Like, this is just what we do. This is so weird. You know? It was the weirdest like they let me keep the suit. They gave me a cool payday. It was nuts. Like nuts. It almost became my career. Like, it was a career break. But it almost became a massive break. Like I got a call the day after from I think Laurinaitis who was like, hey, they loved it. You're gonna come back next week, you're gonna be in a wheelchair with a neck brace. We're gonna really push this thing. And I never heard back after that phone call and then Hassan lost with the pay-per-view and disappeared. Yeah, it was like a legit heat that happened."
"Yeah, I was on like the Kofi track, man. And then they sent me trying to think of what happened first I want to say they sent me to Deep South with this guy Arch Kincaid. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. But if you are ever bored one day, go on YouTube. And you can go on an awesome Arch Kincaid promo thing. One time we were backstage and extras used to always have matches, always. They don't anymore. But we had we'd have matches to be in front of like Arn and Randy and it was so much pressure. And Arch one day was like, I'm just gonna referee us odd duck like the coolest but like this is like a genius like a master's do like three master's degree like that. And he's like, I'm just gonna referee today. I don't feel like getting a sweat. I’m Like, Oh, okay. Sure. And at one point in a match, Stephanie McMahon's like, hey, please don't spill my water. The rest of the match, anytime they went near [Arch said] Don't go near other waters! It's Mrs. McMahon’s, you don’t want to spill it. He would just do these crazy Arch Kincaid things. And like, I remember watching him that day be like, Oh my God, he's gonna get signed because of a guest referee thing. Anyways, fast forward a few months and him and I go to Deep South for a tryout. I remember that critique being if we could give you his character or him your ability, you guys would be signed in a heartbeat. But unfortunately, they felt like I was lacking the character. He was lacking the ability."
"So to be honest, it was it was kind of my last shot. Because I was doing the Ring of Honor thing. And I remember towards the end of the Ring of Honor thing, like having that moment I was like, Oh, this is clicking like something new is clicking. I don't know what it was whether it was connecting with people, or how to have more Main Event style matches that something was there. However, at this ham, Sinclair had owned Ring of Honor, and they were doing all the contracts and stuff. And there's no way I could sign with where we were at because like, I could feel myself on the brink of something that I don't think they agree. But I had this one conversation with the owner, Joe Sinclair. I forget what his first name was. But at the time, he was just like, he offered me 20,000 A year and I could still do Indies. And I was like, Man, I can't make a living off that. And I was running a gym at the time. And I mean, I was up at like, 4:30 Every day, I was exhausted. I was like, Man, I gotta either make money wrestling or just focus on the gym. And I remember saying, I'm like, I need like a legit contract. [He said] You're like, No one's gonna ever pay you more than 20,000 to wrestle. And I was like, oh, like literally in this is the conversation. I just went, Oh, I was like, Oh, hey, so yeah, we're just done. And he was like, she was me. I was like, oh, no, yeah, I'll just wrap up at and I think it was April. And he said, What do you mean, I was like, I didn't realise that's how you viewed me as I thought we were gonna have like a conversation. I was like, if you think that I was like, I'm not gonna waste my time. I just I don't know. I felt real confident. Yeah. And so that was it. I wrapped up in San Antonio, I think I had a match with Lethal maybe. And that next year was crazy. Because I, me and my wife had a conversation. I was like, Listen, I'm gonna give it one year. I was like, I think I can do this. But if I can't, it's fun because we wanted to start a family. We had a house. I was like, one year. And I left them in May. And in September the next year, DIY debuted the next day. But even if that didn't happen, I definitely would have extended the year thing because that next year, I made six figures."
"I mean, we got lucky in so many ways once we got in the door, just Regal helped a lot top just keeping us in the game. And because there were like, if you see the beginning of DIY, like we're tagging, we're not we are and then we finally have the shirt thing where we become DIY. But then that Brooklyn TakeOver match that was the one with Revival that like really, even before that, actually, we had a match with Alpha. And I remember for the Alpha one, so what would happen with us is we would get a text from one of the writers of like you're needed for this taping, you know, a couple days in Full Sail, but it'd be pretty last minute, and I had this UK tour I was doing. So I remember, contacting right away, hey, do you think I'm gonna be needed for this coming taping, because maybe they just left us off one or something. He was like, oh, man, I wish I would know, I'm not going to know. So like, Okay, I told John, I was like, Listen, I'm just gonna buy myself a flight back, and hope I can refund it if they don't use us or whatever. Figure it out. So I'm like doing all this stuff in Scotland and progress. And the UK. I get the text the day before the taping of like, we need you. And I'm like, Alright, cool. I have a flight in three hours. Like it was that close to like, of doing it. And I flew back for it, not knowing what we were gonna do. And just thinking like, I hope this is worth the investment right now. And we got put with Alpha, and had a match that people liked at that time I loved it was short, it was 10 minutes. People loved it. And that was like what solidified them to go like, hey, we have a thing with them. And thank God, I did it. So I flew, I did that match, and went right back to finish my UK tour. But that match catapulted us to get the revival thing. And then we did take over Brooklyn. And all that happened before we were signed. Like before I even went to Pittsburgh, and they found out about the shoulder and stuff. So like, I think that that helped us so much because we were in such good grace with them. Have we got plans for these kids? Yes, kids are over, you know, so it was just like if any of those things just don't happen at the right time."
"No, no, I wish I could say it was. We pitched being like, so we pitched them weird stuff. We're like the Panda Express or something. Like we wanted whatever we pitched we kept going back to we just want a panda to be our mascot. Because I think to the early DIY, we were just doing skits glorious bombs, you know, like we were to us we're like we're just a funny tag team, you know, and it was Jo Belle Castro as far as I know who came up with DIY and hashtag DIY thing but yeah, I mean, so easy to chant got over super well. We're talking currently about like because we don't know if it's going to become a thing on the main roster or not. I know people are hoping for it. We have like you know, you always have your fantasy booking and your own plans. But we're doing a lot right now with the whole concept of DIY of like how to because, with the main roster, you quickly realise there's this whole other world of like marketing and presentation and just a lot of stuff that for a guy like me specifically who is they ring the bell wrestler, I'll do it in the ring. I'll do it on the promos. They want a whole different thing, you know, on the main roster, which is it's great. It's why the guys become global stars, but it's just not who I am naturally. So like both of us have been, how do you make DIY like, something that is globally attractive and like dream-inspired unify type of things? We're doing a lot right now on our end, hoping that if the time comes, like we can present something to them, that's like, okay, yeah, we can we can run with these guys. But who knows?"
"I wouldn't say worse [than the ACL tear]. Well, I think what happened, essentially why they got totally shut down is I went. It was after the last taping for NXT, so NXT is done. I'm done with NXT as far as telling the story for me and Johnny, but I had a couple of stingers. And then I had to go get the shot that was supposed to help calm some stuff down, but they were like, Hey, it's might get worse before it gets better, whatever. And then I had to go to Raw or Smackdown whatever came up next. And medical was like, hey, so every time I'd go I had to pass a physical before I'd wrestle. Like you got to come into your physical and I wasn't, none of my nerve reactions were working at all. Like, like tap, tap whatever. I just remember seeing them and their faces were like, and I was like, What is going on? And that's so that's when I found out they were like, you're you're not medically cleared to have any more matches. I was like, I just remember even that I was like, Wait, what if I just take two weeks off? And then we'll do this one day. It was all taken out of our hands, man. So that was a hard one to stomach, and I didn't know if I was coming back."
"I hope I get what I want out of this. Because I felt like there was a time in NXT where I felt very satisfied I guess, I don't know if that's the exact right word. But I felt very accomplished with like what we did and created. When we were in NXT. Like, there's this false, awful narrative that has now since been created that drives me crazy because people will look back at some of the NXT stuff and just be like, Yeah, well, they didn't want to go up or they didn't want to get called up or like they were scared of this or it's like no, no, we were creating, like, that group of guys. NXT blew up when it came from, like Sami Zayn and Claudio Cesaro, to the Kevin stuff to Bayley and Sasha and then our group coming in like with Finn and Shin and then into like Johnny and I and Undisputed. Like if you were in that room at that moment, like you knew how special it was, it'd be like going to ECW and saying like, Hey, Tommy Dreamer, and Sandman and Raven. You guys don't want to leave this place and go, you know, because WWE that's where the big stars are. You're wanting to do like WrestleMania isn't like, yes, but yeah, I want to see if we can make this WrestleMania first. That's literally what it was like. It was like, can we get 10,000 people? Can we get a million-dollar gate? Can we do that multiple times? Can we get TakeOver to be equivalent to Mania? Can we can we do 20,000? Like our mindset was like, Oh, we're gonna get TV now. How far can [it go]? It wasn't like it was a weird us against them. And it wasn't like we don't want to go there. That same company, same umbrella, we're not stupid. We know. We want to make this thing. Bigger than that."
"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."
“My wife and child."
