WWE NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa Reportedly Dealing With Injury

No Raw or SmackDown Live appearance this week explained?

Ross Tweddell smiling

Feb 28, 2019

Tommaso Ciampa

Fans of NXT were left slightly perplexed this week, as both Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano failed to compete on Raw or SmackDown Live - this was especially confusing considering a Gargano vs. Cesaro match had been advertised before Tuesday night's SmackDown show.

It appears plans involving the DIY lads could have changed in the build-up to this week's shows due to NXT Champion Ciampa working through an injury recently - that's according to the latest

Wrestling Observer

, at least.

Here's what was written in the latest

WON

: "Ciampa is injured although we don’t know the severity of it. It’s something he had been working through with the idea of taking care of it after...Takeover. But that explains why he’s wasn’t on television this week nor was he listed for the upcoming weekend NXT dates."

On last week's SmackDown Live, DIY took on The Bar in a tag team match, during which, The Greatest Sports Entertainer of All Time went to give Sheamus a Powerbomb off the middle rope. However, the move went wrong, as the large frame of Sheamus came crashing down on the knee of Ciampa, making it bend a way it simply shouldn't.

Reports surfaced shortly after last week's show claiming

both Sheamus and Ciampa were "fine,"

and while it hasn't been confirmed that the Powerbomb is what injured Tommaso, there has to be a chance it did...

No doubt we'll learn more on this as the days go on.