Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano had some wild ideas for their tag team before settling on DIY.
RAW Superstar Tommaso Ciampa was a recent guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet. When asked about how DIY initially formed, Ciampa credited William Regal for helping them out when the two finally got in the door at WWE NXT.
“I mean, we got lucky in so many ways once we got in the door. Regal helped a lot top just keeping us in the game,” Tommaso Ciampa said. “And because there were like, if you see the beginning of DIY, like we’re tagging, we’re not we are, and then we finally have the shirt thing where we become DIY.
“But then that Brooklyn TakeOver match that was the one with Revival that like really, even before that, actually, we had a match with Alpha. And I remember for the Alpha one, so what would happen with us is we would get a text from one of the writers of like you’re needed for this taping, you know, a couple days in Full Sail, but it’d be pretty last minute, and I had this UK tour I was doing.
“So I remember, contacting right away, hey, do you think I’m gonna be needed for this coming taping, because maybe they just left us off one or something. He was like, oh, man, I wish I would know, I’m not going to know. So like, Okay, I told John, I was like, Listen, I’m just gonna buy myself a flight back, and hope I can refund it if they don’t use us or whatever. Figure it out.
“So I’m like doing all this stuff in Scotland and progress. And the UK. I get the text the day before the taping of like, we need you. And I’m like, Alright, cool. I have a flight in three hours. Like it was that close to like, of doing it. And I flew back for it, not knowing what we were gonna do just thinking like, I hope this is worth the investment right now. And we got put with Alpha, and had a match that people liked at that time I loved it was short; it was 10 minutes. People loved it.
“And that was like what solidified them to go like, hey, we have a thing with them. And thank God, I did it. So I flew, I did that match, and went right back to finish my UK tour. But that match catapulted us to get the revival thing. And then we did take over Brooklyn. And all that happened before we were signed.
“Like before I even went to Pittsburgh, and they found out about the shoulder and stuff. So like, I think that that helped us so much because we were in such good grace with them. Have we got plans for these kids? Yes, kids are over, you know, so it was just like if any of those things just don’t happen at the right time.”
Panda Express?
When asked what the original plans were for his tag team with Johnny Gargano, Ciampa admitted the duo pitched some weird stuff. One was calling them Panda Express because they wanted a Panda for a mascot.
“No, no, I wish I could say it was,” Tommaso Ciampa said. “We pitched being like, so we pitched them weird stuff. We’re like the Panda Express or something. Like we wanted whatever we pitched we kept going back to we just want a panda to be our mascot.
“Because I think to the early DIY, we were just doing skits glorious bombs. To us, we’re like we’re just a funny tag team. And it was Jo Belle Castro as far as I know who came up with DIY and hashtag DIY thing. But yeah, I mean, so easy to chant got over super well. We’re talking currently about like because we don’t know if it’s going to become a thing on the main roster or not. I know people are hoping for it.
“We have like you know, you always have your fantasy booking and your own plans. But we’re doing a lot right now with the whole concept of DIY of like how to because, with the main roster, you quickly realize there’s this whole other world of like marketing and presentation and just a lot of stuff that for a guy like me specifically who is they ring the bell wrestler, I’ll do it in the ring.
“I’ll do it on the promos. They want a whole different thing, you know, on the main roster, which is it’s great. It’s why the guys become global stars, but it’s just not who I am naturally. So like both of us have been, how do you make DIY like, something that is globally attractive and like dream-inspired unify type of things? We’re doing a lot right now on our end, hoping that if the time comes, like we can present something to them, that’s like, okay, yeah, we can we can run with these guys. But who knows?”
READ MORE: DIY Celebrates RAW Return With A Glorious Bomb
What do you make of Tommaso Ciampa’s comments? Are you happy to see DIY back together on WWE RAW? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
