8 Recent WWE Repackagings That Were Doomed From Day One
1. Ciampa
In an interview in 2019, Tomasso Ciampa said that he would rather “retire” than get called up. Of course, in the following years he back-pedalled and claimed that it was about the intensive schedule more than the booking of the main roster but it’s hard to trust that from a man who once promised he would “spend the remainder” of his career in NXT.
And why wouldn’t he want to? Ciampa organically rose from the tag division with his partner Johnny Gargano to put on the brand’s greatest feud and some of the best matches in WWE over the last decade. For many, he was the first name that came to mind when they spoke of NXT.
In April 2022, Ciampa dropped his first name and joined the ranks of Monday Night Raw with very little pomp and circumstance considering how integral he had been to the company’s developmental brand. A few weeks later he turned heel and then aligned himself with The Miz.
The Blackheart, the man who needed no alliances and only cared for Goldie, was suddenly little more than a heater. Out of all the things he could’ve gotten from the gamble of a call-up, it's highly unlikely that "scrapping with Logan Paul" was something he was predicting.
Ciampa fell from the graces of the top of the NXT to, so far, a booking afterthought on Monday Night Raw.