6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (22 August - Results & Review)

Downs…

5. Ciampa Promo Wasted

Some promos should be delivered backstage (see Nakamura, Shinsuke) to get the full weight. Others, however should be given in front of an audience to maximize reaction.

Tommaso Ciampa is a pretty good talker. He can cut an impassioned promo with the best of them, and Monday’s direct-to-camera backstage vignette was perfectly fine, as he spelt out how his return two months ago has seen him come up short numerous times. Ciampa said he came back to be “the guy” as he was before, that he was going to have to “do it yourself” and then said he was going to “take over the game.”

There was absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

However, Ciampa has not had the opportunity to really connect with fans in a meaningful way since returning. If he had been invited out on the entrance ramp to cut that same promo in an interview, he could have very likely gotten the fans behind him and made that speech count so much more. It would have reverberated more and been more memorable than a 60-second pre-tape that was easy to miss or skip.

This just felt like a wasted opportunity, especially for a guy who needs to reach that larger WWE audience who hasn’t seen him in NXT and only knows him as Miz’s former lackey.