10 Best Wrestling Talkers Of 2018
9. Tommaso Ciampa
What's especially impressive about Tommaso Ciampa's promo game is that he isn't a natural.
He has had to work really, really hard to reach the apex of NXT - he entered through the backdoor, and not the front row of TakeOver - and it is this arduous road to the NXT Championship that has informed the unassailable belief he has in himself.
Knowing that a great promo is as much in the eyes as it is in the throat, Ciampa often raises his brow when delivering a response loaded with his warped truth. It's as if he is questioning everybody and everything around him. Ciampa also has gigantic balls: knowing full well that sitting cross-legged is a very iconic position in which to cut very iconic promos, he nonetheless does it without giving one f*ck about Aleister Black or the events 2011. He gives not one f*ck about offending the Undertaker on Twitter. He deems himself the best, ever, and carries himself as such.
Ciampa is so unnerving and intense in his delivery that it wouldn't be a surprise to learn that he has never blinked - and this very real, unaffected character work has anchored NXT's lofty melodrama to incredible effect in 2018.