As noted, Giovanni Vinci appeared as a guest on the latest episode of INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
In addition to the highlights from the interview that we previously published here on the website, the former Imperium member also spoke about his character change prior to his WWE release, a surreal moment with John Cena and more.
The following are some additional highlights from the interview.
Right before you got released, you were kind of repackaged. So you had these vignettes that you’re talking about. It’s like Italian elegance. You’re driving a Ferrari in Las Vegas, and then you come out and you lose to Apollo Crews in less than 10 seconds. So what was the original plan with these vignettes and where your character would go? “I thought the plan was to get me going right away, and I didn’t find out about that till basically the day of the show. So at the end of the day, you’re a professional. Whatever the plan is, you try to make the most of it. I do have to say, as far as entrance-wise, that was my favorite entrance I’ve ever done. Because in the group, I always felt a little bit like I tried to fit in. That’s why I didn’t stand out. Whereas with that character that I did in NXT, and it worked great there, doing that on the main roster, I just felt like, Okay, I have some sort of direction, who I am, what I’m supposed to do. Was my favorite entrance, personality-wise, charisma-wise and everything, and then the plan changed the day of. Looking back now, I feel like from a business standpoint, if you look at the positives, it definitely got attention, definitely got people talking. The unfortunate thing for me is just that not more came out of it, because I feel like we could have done a lot of cool stuff with that character on SmackDown. I know Apollo and I could have tore it up in a match. We did in NXT. We did on Main Event. We have great chemistry. It was just things just kept happening. We moved to a different channel two weeks after then the next thing happened. I wasn’t on TV for a little bit. And, yeah, that’s just one of those things that are a little unfortunate. Because I saw myself actually having really good matches with the guys in the United States title picture at the time, like Melo, LA Knight, Andrade at the time. I think we could have done some cool stuff there. But, yeah, it is what it is.”
I think the way that Samantha Irvin introduced you really helped to get you over, especially early on “Oh, for sure, she did an amazing job. I was actually looking forward to the introduction every time myself, like, oh, here we go. ‘Giovanni!’ She did amazing.”
Did she tell you she was going to do that? “No, no. Caught me off guard myself. Like, oh, that was cool.”
I’ve heard a lot of people saying that this new El Grande Americano looks a lot like Ludwig Kaiser. What do you think of the work that he’s doing? “I think he’s killing it at whatever he’s doing. I think he has a good feel for what the people want to see and what people want to get out of it, and the reaction speak for themselves.”
You had a match where it was Imperium versus John Cena and Seth Rollins. I don’t know if a lot of people know that you were in the ring with John Cena. How did that match come about? “Man, was such a surreal moment. It was announced that Cena was going to be on that show in India. It was kind of last-minute. It was kind of thrown together, or was announced that Seth and Cena against Ludwig and I at the time, and I tell you, that was the loudest reaction I’ve ever heard in my life. That building of the floor was vibrating. It was shaking when we were standing there. He did his entrance, and then it was one of those. It’s almost like you wear a real-life VR, you know, those virtual reality things. Because he was my brother’s favorite wrestler. Growing up in 2004 2005, obviously watched him my whole life myself, and then he gets a tag, and I get a tag, okay, wrestling John Cena now, crazy moment. Obviously you want to still be professional like 99%, but that 1% in the back of your mind is like, Oh, this is cool. This is very cool.”
