Tommaso Ciampa recently appeared on “The Ten Count” podcast to discuss his memories of the late Bray Wyatt.
As you all know by now, Wyatt passed away last August at the age of 36 after suffering a heart attack.
Ciampa said, “Yeah, dude, so he was like — the best way to describe him is a dude who you come up to and you feel like you’ve known him forever. Because he makes you feel that way. Like, for instance, the first time I ever met him he greeted me with a warm hug. We talked for about 15 minutes. When I walked away, I questioned myself. I was like, maybe I’ve met him before. Maybe we’ve talked before”
He continued, “He made me feel like we were just best buddies. So he was one of those guys where everybody was like, you hear a wrestler’s wrestler or a brother on the road. That was Bray. Family guy. Just a good dude to be around.”
Paul Heyman will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame tonight, and Gabe Sapolsky took to Twitter to pay tribute. For those unware, Sapolsky was Heyman’s personal assistant in ECW. He wrote,
“It took me until this moment to realize why @paulheyman going into the Hall Of Fame truly means so much to me.
I made a handshake deal to sell the ECW Program when it made a few hundred dollars a month. Eventually, it became much, much more valuable. Paul could have broken the deal at any point. He honored that handshake until the end of ECW. He unselfishly mentored me. He was always there when I asked to talk while giving me space to grow on my own. He volunteered to appear on the most important show I ever booked – the EVOLVE 10th Anniversary show, the only live indie special in WWE Network history. I had tried to convince him to come to ROH years before, but he saved it until I needed it the most. I love and appreciate him for all of this. Yet, these aren’t the reasons it means so much.
It is the example that Paul set for me. ECW was never supposed to make it, but we charged ahead. Paul not only survived every time he was almost buried in this business, he constantly evolved and each chapter was better than the last. I watched him stand beside the hard cam in a run down bingo hall and this weekend he is about to be part of the main event of two sold out stadium shows with a generational, historic act and storyline. I was a 21-year-old kid with no right to still be here 30 years later. Paul set the example of how to do that. Now that example will be immortalized in the WWE Hall Of Fame. This one is for anyone who had a vision that people scoffed out, for anyone who was told they wouldn’t make it, for anyone who has evolved into a better version of themself and then did it again and again and again. It is for all of us. The ones who said F it, we are taking what is ours. That’s why this HOF induction means the world to me.
This picture is from backstage at the EVOLVE 10th Anniversary show, the live special on WWE Network. It is my favorite picture ever that does not have my kid in it. It was a candid shot taken by @tampaorpheum and I didn’t realize Paul was watching me as I ran the show, just like I watched him in the same building a couple of decades earlier when he ran ECW.”
