Tommaso Ciampa still does not know who leaked word that he was leaving WWE, but he is glad they did.
Speaking to James Stewart of Stick to Sports, Ciampa said the report that surfaced while he still had months left on his WWE deal ended up working entirely in his favor.
“The best thing to happen to me is that there was a leaked internet report when I had about two or three months left on my deal that said, ‘Ciampa is leaving WWE. We don’t know why, but when his deal is up, he’s leaving.’ I have no idea where that came from, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Ciampa said.
He said the report did the work of putting his name on the market before he was even available.
“It raised this interest, and I started to get a lot of inquiries. ‘Oh, look at these options I have,'” Ciampa said.
Notably, Ciampa said the promotion he ended up signing with was not among those early conversations, and he credited Tony Khan’s approach for that.
“AEW wasn’t even part of that because, in Tony’s defense, he is very adamant that there is no tampering,” Ciampa said.
Ciampa made his AEW debut on the January 31, 2026 edition of Collision, beating Mark Briscoe for the TNT Championship in his first match with the company. That reign lasted 11 days before he dropped the title to Kyle Fletcher, but he has remained a regular on AEW television since, including a recent turn on Briscoe.
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