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#3. Ciampa struggled in Ring of Honor
Tommaso Ciampa knows that he's worth more than $20,000. To label Ciampa's time at Ring of Honor as disappointing would be an understatement. Ciampa felt typecast and despite often pleading for a change of character and for matches against some of the wrestlers on the star studded roster, those pleas often fell on deaf ears.
Ciampa was hired for his promo skills, but inexplicably wasn't even allowed to speak during his first two years with the company. Ciampa was limited to short, enhancement matches against talent not even contracted to Ring of Honor. He thought,
"Man, I'm not getting better here. I'd beg - let me work with Generico, and Chris Hero, and Claudio and I just never got to do it. It was so frustrating."
When Ciampa finally gained some momentum, he felt like he was "hitting an imaginary ceiling." Ciampa told Lilian Garcia,
"I felt like the 'Psychopath' character was too distant from me and I couldn't humanize it enough with that fan base. The Ring of Honor fan base is so real and so true. It's the NXT fan base, it's the same fan base. You just can't feed them crap. You've got to be raw with them. If you're not raw with them, they'll see right through it and they're not gonna buy in."
Ciampa tried his best to make the changes that were needed and ended up having a fantastic match against Jay Briscoe in England. The two were set to headline an upcoming pay-per-view in Las Vegas, but the powers that be in Ring of Honor nixed the idea, changing the match to a 4-Way instead. The reason they gave: Ciampa couldn't sell a pay-per-view.
Things really came to a head when Ciampa's contract was up. When negotiating with ROH, he was given a low ball offer by Joe Koff, who told Ciampa, "No one's gonna offer you more than $20,000." Ciampa was shocked that ROH only thought of him as mid-card talent and nothing more,
"I didn't realize you thought that of me. It was like a light bulb friendly, relaxed demeanor. It was like, 'Oh, we don't have to do this anymore. My contract's coming up. I'm good. I'm gonna go somewhere else and find out, if you're right or not.'"
