Tommaso Ciampa Details Neck Injury; Says He Would Wake Up With Numb Hands

Tommaso Ciampa opens up about his neck injury.

WWE posted a new video looking at Tommaso Ciampa as he prepared to undergo neck surgery. In the video, Ciampa detailed the injury and the symptoms he experienced prior to making the decision to undergo surgery.

“I think if you ask anybody who has been doing it for 10-plus years, they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I got a crappy neck.’ That’s kind of how I reasoned it with myself for years. ‘Oh, I got a wrestlers neck.’ It just kept getting worse,” said Ciampa. “I started getting a lot of stingers after I returned, which is like a shot down your arm where you lose feeling for a minute. I was getting them but I thought ‘this is part of the thing everybody must get.’ But the symptoms got weird. Fingers on my left hand got shaky as I open them. If you tell me to lie flat, I can’t do it. I wake up every hour and have numb hands.”

Ciampa continued, “My spinal column became in jeopardy. Once that happened, the call was taken out of everybody’s hands and it was like, that’s it, one more bad bump and it could be severe. I did my Raw debut, SmackDown debut, NXT taping and the next Monday at Raw, I got a physical exam and did not pass and was not cleared. We’re at the point where surgery has to happen now. It’s too much of a risk. That day in medical kind of broke me. I went to (Johnny Gargano) and said ‘sorry.'”

Prior to Ciampa’s injury, he was set to face Gargano at NXT TakeOver: New York on Friday. The emotional video breaks kayfabe as it details Ciampa’s friendship with Gargano and includes comments from Gargano. The video also shows a lighter side of Ciampa as he opens up about his relationship with his wife and his daughter being born. 

You can view the entire video in the featured player above.