5 Things you didn't know about Tommaso Ciampa

#4. His wife has been instrumental to his career success

Tommaso Ciampa visited by his wife and child after neck surgery

Tommaso Ciampa was introduced to Jessie Ward by fellow wrestler Samoa Joe. Ward, a former Tough Enough contestant and producer, hit it off with Ciampa and the two were married in 2013. Ciampa didn't expect his wife's advice to be instrumental to his professional wrestling career, but it was career-altering for him.

He told Lilian Garcia,

"She wasn't involved in the business. She did Tough Enough as a contestant. The next season she became a producer on Tough Enough and then that lended her a gig in WWE for three years as a backstage producer. Then she got out of the business. By the time we met, she was out of the business."

Ciampa was wrestling in the independent circuit, but struggled to garner the success he would later achieve in NXT. That's when his wife dropped some eye-opening advice,

"You're spending a lot of time trying to make other people look good. You ever think about how you're gonna look good yourself?"

At first, Ciampa fought against the notion, but he eventually took his wife's advice to heart. As Ciampa began to trust his wife's advice, things began to change for him,

"I started to kind of catch momentum and steamroll in the independents. Even how I handled social media became a thing, and having shirts and 8x10s became a thing. She was the one who pushed that because it's not my thing. She would push it, 'You should probably promote yourself.' I think that probably got me to focus less on the match and wrestling, and got me to focus a little bit more on how I present myself. Then it evolved into me becoming Tommaso Ciampa, which is my godmother's last name. I put all my eggs in my basket. I'm not gonna pretend I'm this or that."