Tommaso Ciampa is one of the many rising superstars in NXT, and while he was riding high early in his NXT career, a neck injury hindered any momentum that Ciampa could pick up. Now that he’s recovered and looking to regain his spot at the top of the totem pole, Ciampa sat down with Yahoo to discuss his road to recovery, and what he thinks NXT will be able to achieve in the future.
On the difficult recovery from his neck injury:
When you have the surgery, the biggest question mark is how quickly are you going to get strength and feeling back in your arms and hands. For me, the second I woke up, it was like snapping your fingers. I could open and close my hand again, strength wasn’t at 100 percent, but movement, mobility, control, all of that was there. Feeling and sensation came back immediately, which was a very good sign. [Any uncertainty I had] was more hesitation going into the procedure, me hoping that it worked as well as we thought it would since we caught it early. As soon as I woke up and all of those boxes were checked, there wasn’t much doubt about me returning.
On his vision for NXT’s future:
We are equal, NXT is legit. I think some people knew that but now we’re reaching a bigger audience. I joked about it when we got the USA deal, that I couldn’t wait until 5 or 10 years down the road when it’s WrestleMania weekend and NXT is drawing the bigger house. I stand by that. You give us 5 to 10 years on TV, every week on USA, I think NXT is going to become in everyone’s eyes the No. 1 brand in professional wrestling.
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