Report: NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa Will Need Neck Surgery

WWE NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa missed last week’s episodes of Raw and SmackDown with a neck injury that he’s been reportedly dealing with for weeks, and it sounds like he won’t be able to compete at NXT TakeOver: New York (Blacklist).

Tommaso Ciampa has been the scourge of WWE NXT for more than a year, and the brand’s champion had a rivalry for the ages last year against Johnny Gargano. While the two have reunited to form the venerable tag team DIY, taking their talents to the main roster for a couple of matches, there’s speculation that Ciampa and Gargano could once again collide at WrestleMania weekend.

However, the Wrestling Observer News’s Dave Meltzer reports that Ciampa will undergo neck surgery this week, with the implication being that he’ll no longer be able to wrestle at NXT TakeOver: New York on the Friday before WrestleMania. [Hat tip to Fightful.com’s Andrew Thompson for the story.]

PWInsider.com’s Mike Johnson first reported Ciampa’s neck injury last week, clarifying that he’s been suffering from the injury for four or five weeks, despite the fact that it only became clear to fans last week when a Raw segment was rewritten and when Gargano did not face Cesaro in singles competition on SmackDown (Ciampa and Sheamus were supposed to appear in their partners’ respective corners).

Per Meltzer, the plan was for Ciampa to work through the injury and defend the NXT Championship at TakeOver: New York, but that doesn’t appear to be the case; the injury is apparently severe enough to require surgery now.

WWE generally uses caution when superstars are injured, and they do an excellent job of working on the fly with their replacement options, as evidenced by Kofi Kingston’s rise to prominence as a singles competitor on SmackDown in the aftermath of Mustafa Ali’s injury.

Neck injuries are scary, so we can only hope that Ciampa is doing OK and will have a successful surgery. His character work is impeccable, and he’s been a strong champion for the dominant Black and Yellow brand over the past several months. Ciampa’s had rough luck with injuries throughout his WWE career, but he came back better than ever from his ACL tear and will likely do the same from this neck injury.