Some interesting names have parted ways with WWE recently and last mont Tommaso Ciampa announced that he would be leaving the company when his contract expired. Ciampa wasted no time when it came to making his next move as he debuted with All Elite Wrestling on January 28th then went on to defeat Mark Briscoe to become the new TNT Champion a few days later.
Recently Tommaso Ciampa appeared on Close Up with Renee Paquette and he explained why the time was finally right for him to move on from WWE and work elsewhere.
“To be honest, that’s the biggest thing that you start to go is like we are getting a definitive income, it’s a salary. And you know what the independent scene’s like, you understand the travel if you start to go to different countries to do this and stuff, and what’s that impact on Willow, what’s the impact on my wife?”
“And just the life we live, so there’s just the biggest decision of it all was like, are we finally ready to do it, you know, and like when I left NXT to make the move to the main roster. Financially, we were not ready to do that, and we knew it. So, there was not really a question of, ‘okay, let’s take a risk. Let’s bet on ourselves.’ We got at that time a three-year-old, now a seven-year-old. It just wasn’t in the cards. Yeah. But now I’m starting to go, yeah, I think we are at the point financially, let’s take the risk.”
Ciampa originally signed with WWE in 2007, but was released from his contract later that year. He went on to sign a new deal with WWE in 2015 and he stayed with the company for over a decade. Tommaso Ciampa quick ascended to the top of the ladder in NXT where he became a two time NXT Champion and a one time NXT Tag Team Champion alongside Johnny Gargano.
In 2022, Ciampa started making appearances on the WWE main roster and he and Gargano managed to become two time WWE Tag Team Champions. Ciampa had been part of the Friday Night SmackDown brand for some time. He competed in his final WWE match on the December 19 2025 episode of SmackDown when he teamed with Johnny Gargano to face Carmelo Hayes and Ilja Dragunov.