Ciampa opens up about his road to recovery.
Since the fall of 2022, Tommaso Ciampa had been sidelined after undergoing surgery following an issue with his hip labrum and dealing with pain in his glute, back and SI joint.
He returned to Monday Night Raw on 6/19 and scored a win over The Miz in singles action. Ciampa guest appeared on Out of Character with Ryan Satin and dove into how he’s feeling after being away from the ring for that period of time. He feels it’s too early for him to say.
Ciampa said he’s probably 100 percent healed scientifically, but does not know what will happen when he begins to put his body to the test in the ring. He added that he got stem cell treatment while sidelined.
So it’s awesome when you don’t have to wrestle. The concern of course is when you have to wrestle and you’re like, oh crap (Ciampa responded when asked how he’s feels coming back from surgery). So it’s always hard to answer because I feel 100 percent. If I never had to wrestle again, I’d feel like, oh yeah, I’m gonna live a good, healthy life. You enter the bumping, the traveling, flights, car rides, it’s too early for me to say. I’ve only had one match since I’ve come back and it’s probably 100 percent as far as scientifically healed. But, I have no idea what it’s gonna do when I start to test it. I did stem cells too when I was (out) and the results of that have been great, so I’m really hoping that, knock on wood, knock on something, I’ve had some bad injury luck in my career so I’m really hoping that it’s behind me and I just get a nice, solid run here of being in the company. That’d be really nice.
The injury that he was dealing with started when he was in NXT 2.0. He added that he would only be working Tuesdays, but when he got to the main roster, that called for more dates which aggravated the injury.
It was a culmination of problems and when he went to get things fixed, so much was wrong. Circling back to the stem cell treatment, when Ciampa went to Columbia for that, he said he was a bit depressed because of the thought that he might’ve had his last match.
So, somewhere around the start of 2.0, what would happen is I would take any forward bump or a powerslam, a suplex, anything where I flipped and landed and I would get this thing where I would bump and then my left side, my glute, my hamstring, it’s hard to even explain. It felt like something that wrapped around my lower back through the groin and stuff, would just kind of go numb and weak. I wouldn’t be able to stand on my left foot at all. But then it would go, it’d be temporary. It’d stay for 20 seconds or so, back pain, you’d breathe through it, you wiggle out of the ring or something and I would carry on. With the NXT 2.0 schedule, especially coming off the pandemic and everything, it was a light schedule so say that happened in a match on a Tuesday, I might not have a match the next Tuesday and I get two weeks of rest. I almost wouldn’t even think about it and then it would happen again. That was happening fairly often. Not enough for me to be alarmed and then when I started to go on the road and started to take on that full-time schedule and do the live events and stuff, it just got to the point where I was like, oh crap, this happened Saturday, Sunday, Monday and that pain’s worse and worse and worse and it finally got to a point where we were on a live event and we’d tried a lot at this point. I’d gotten some injections, I’d done a lot of treatments and it just happened, I don’t know, two or three times in one match and I just remember the last one, it was a suplex, I wanna say off the second, not even off the top and when it landed, you know that peel of light, I think I wanna throw up. The exact feeling I had when I tore my ACL and I just kept thinking to myself, you just have to get up for a spear. It’s all you have to do and just finish it but that ended up, you know, being the last time I was in a ring and that’s some time in September of last year and then when I finally went to go get it fixed, so much was wrong. I had bulging discs in my back, SI joint was closed off, hip labrum was torn to shreds, a bone was rubbing up against something. It was just a mess. The MRI had a lot of language in it I didn’t understand. So the surgery and the rehab wasn’t very fun, I won’t lie. It was kind of miserable at points. When I went out to Columbia, I was honestly at a point where I was like, holy crap. A little bit depressed, a little bit like I might’ve had my last match and it was in whatever town at a live event, not how I envisioned it being. So the stem cells really, really were a game changer. Working with the PTs down at the Performance Center just really educated myself about like, at 38 years old, how you have to kind of change up your methods, your training, mobility and it was a freaking mess man. It was not a fun time at all. The saving grace was being home with the little one and my wife, great support system but, it was rough.
Later in the conversation, he dove into the idea of reuniting with Johnny Gargano on the main roster. The dream match that Ciampa is looking at is against Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. He went on to name The Usos (Jimmy & Jey Uso), The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Big E & Xavier Woods) and The Viking Raiders (Ivar & Erik) as matchups he’d like to have as well.
Ciampa mentioned that it’d be a dream scenario to work against Gargano on the main roster. On the topic of the Owens and Zayn matchup, Ciampa feels the fans who are aware of their history could have fun with it as Kevin has turned on Sami and Ciampa has turned on Gargano.
So, I mean, the dream match that I always see, I guess there’s two but the one that jumps a lot is with Sami (Zayn) and Kevin (Owens). Kind of parallel to their relationship and ours. Those are two guys that, man, I have the same chemistry with Sami Zayn, Johnny (Gargano) has the same chemistry with Kevin and really good friends of ours and all that. That would be such a dream match for us, let alone for just fans. Usos are on just a different level. Kofi (Kingston) and I started months apart on the independents at the same school. I’ve never done anything with him in WWE so the idea of them, being New Day, again, when he gets healthy. Ivar, when he was ‘Handsome Johnny’, he’s the first guy who trained me and broke me into the business so the idea of doing stuff with Viking Raiders, that to me, all of those scenarios and the stories we could likely tell with those guys and Johnny and I have a real passion for tag team wrestling and the psychology of it and making it mean something, holding the freaking tag rope and feed on the apron and never breaking a five count. I think if we could bring some of that in and then all of a sudden get with these freakin’ larger than life superstars, it could be a special run so I definitely am hoping to do it. To be honest, I want so badly to stay healthy and get the opportunity to tell great stories and have great programs where people can just, five years from now be like, man, I don’t want them to make it easy to where they’re just like, oh, he had that one great match with so and so or that one great promo. I want it to be one of those rapid fires where it’s like, oh, and then they did The Uso thing and then they did the thing with Kevin and Sami and then they did the thing where they went and did their own thing and they were separate and he had that thing with GUNTHER… remember him and Randy (Orton)? I want it to just be this portfolio where you’re just like, well damn, that was a hell of a career. What a run, you know? So whether that’s doing D.I.Y., whether that’s doing stuff against Johnny which would obviously be a dream scenario at some point, I just want an opportunity man.
I think we could have so much fun too with that smarter fan base of like, there’s always that underlying, can Johnny trust me? And can Sami trust him? And then Kevin and I, we’re buddies in real life but, we have a bit of similarity to us and I just think we could really have fun and do some stuff whether it’s backstages and vignettes. Like I said, all I’ve got is time and ideas and you just write ‘em in your phone and you just wait for the time to happen when you can actually put them into existence but yeah, it would be amazing, amazing, especially, when I think back to when we were D.I.Y., in Johnny and I’s own personal journey until now, we are significantly better performers than we were then. Like significantly, especially for myself. I’ve really evolved and kind of found myself and come into my own. I feel like Johnny found himself and his stride earlier than my own. But that element of, okay, you guys dug what we were doing then. Wait until you can see what we can do now. If the opportunity was there and we get to get rolling and stuff, I think we could really turn out some awesome, awesome content.
This past Monday on Raw, Ciampa went after Bronson Reed during his match against Shinsuke Nakamura and caused a disqualification. Afterwards, Nakamura laid Ciampa out for getting involved.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Out of Character with Ryan Satin with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
