While we have seen a number of heel turns in the past few years, nothing can be compared with the heel turn of Tommaso Ciampa, who went all in and committed to being a villain like no one has in years.

During his recent appearance on Edge & Christian’s podcast, Ciampa gave a rare out of character interview and revealed the inspiration behind his hard work.

Tommaso talked about the time he had to step away from the ring for a knee surgery immediately after his heel turn and he recalled how everybody including Christian was saying that NXT was missing a heel.

According to the former NXT Champion, he felt that void and decided to do his ‘darnest’ to fill this gap once he returned to action and NXT.

Continuing on the topic, Ciampa said that there are always different trends in wrestling but nobody was committing to kayfabe and he explained that this is the reason why there are so few successful heels in the business today.

As we now know, Ciampa actually lived his heel persona like no one else has in recent memory. He went as far as to avoid having merchandise and not using catchphrases in his promos, so people wouldn’t support him.

This commitment made him one of the best heels in the business and his heel run of the past few years is considered one of the best runs in the company’s history.