The former WWE star had surfaced on social media last month after almost a year of complete silence following his mysterious release from the Endeavor-owned promotion back in February, 2025.
The 35-year-old, now going by the name Fabian Aichner, had then confirmed that he had taken a break from the wrestling world after his WWE exit, but he was not done with the wrestling world for good.
Giovanni Vinci Makes Surprise Return
Tonight’s TNA Impact episode was main evented by a 2-out-of-3 falls X Division Championship match. The defending champion Leon Slater got the first fall early in the bout.
His challenger, Cedric Alexander, managed to gain control of the bout afterwards, however, scoring two consecutive falls to end Slater’s 298-day reign.
Though the new champion didn’t get much time to celebrate his victory. Fabian Aichner made his surprise return to wrestling and confirmed that he will be coming after the title to end the show:
Giovanni Vinci has not wrestled a match since December 2024 and he has not had a TV match since September that year. We’ll have to see when he gets his title shot against Alexander after his surprise return.
The former Imperium member was the last to join the faction on the main roster back in September 2022, and he was the first one to be kicked out of the group in April 2024. He was off TV for many months after this before WWE started airing vignettes promoting Vinci as a wealthy Italian snob, a character he had previously played in NXT.
He finally made his re-debut as a singles star on the September 6 SmackDown, where he lost a match to Apollo Crews in three seconds. After losing to Crews once again two weeks later, Vinci attacked the high-flying star. This proved to be his final appearance for the company as the 35-year-old was released from his contract on February 8, 2025, ending his bizarre run with the promotion.
After resurfacing on social media for the first time since his release last month, Giovanni Vinci spoke to Chris Van Vliet for his first interview since his WWE departure. Now going by the name Fabian Aichner, Vinci did not speak on the reasons behind his release. He did talk about his final WWE appearances, and revealed that he was told about the plans for the Apollo Crews loss only on the day of the show:
“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.”
Giovanni Vinci claimed that his entrance before the match was his favourite of all time, as he felt like he finally got to showcase his personality. The Italian star believes that he could have had great matches with the talents on the roster at the time if WWE had allowed him:
“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.”
The former NXT star was also asked if he was surprised on getting the call about his release. Aichner suggested that he was expecting the call after being off TV for months. The former Imperium member mentioned that he was trying to keep his thoughts positive. When SmackDown went back to three hours, he thought the company might bring him back, but it didn’t end up happening:
“I was and I wasn’t because, I mean, during the summer of the year previous, I wasn’t on TV, but I knew there was a plan to come back eventually. We did those vignettes and everything, but that didn’t last long, unfortunately. So after that, I noticed when some thoughts started to creep in. You don’t want to hear that call. But when it happened, I can’t say that I was really surprised at it. So it was kind of a weird mix of feelings.”
The former Evolve Champion also explained his absence from the wrestling world since his release. He noted that he decided to take a month off after working hard during his whole WWE tenure, which turned into this long break.
