Published: May 15, 2026 by Liam | Last Updated: May 15, 2026 by Liam
Liam has been reporting & analyzing wrestling news for over eight years, and is currently the Managing Editor at WrestleTalk.com. Immersed in wrestling for 18 years, he has over 11,000 published articles in addition to leading and overseeing WrestleTalk.com's coverage.
WWE/TNA
Former WWE star Fabian Aichner, who was also known as Giovanni Vinci, has officially joined TNA Wrestling.
Tonight’s episode of TNA Impact concluded with an X-Division Championship 2/3 falls match with Leon Slater defending against Cedric Alexander.
After Slater went 1-0 up, Alexander turned things around and scored the win to become champion and end Slater’s historic title reign and ultimately meaning Slater’s reign ties Austin Aries’ record for the longest reign, rather than breaking the record.
However, Alexander’s celebrations were cut off by the arrival of a new star to TNA – Fabian Aichner.
Aichner came out onto the stage and pointed at Alexander, signifying that he is coming for the X-Division Championship.
His tron used the Veni Vidi Vici slogan that he used in NXT when he underwent the transformation to the Giovanni Vinci character in 2022 after GUNTHER and Ludwig Kaiser were called up to the main roster without him, until he reunited with them a few months later.
While they were of course on different paths while in WWE, Aichner and Alexander both had the same starting point at the 2016 Cruiserweight Classic, and also the same end point when they were released in February 2025.
Aichner had been pretty much silent within wrestling for a year until he recently had an interview with Chris Van Vliet, which got his name back out there ahead of his appearance on Impact tonight.
WWE’s Mistakes With Giovanni Vinci
After a big buildup to reintroducing Giovanni Vinci to SmackDown in 2024, WWE ended up bizarrely having him lose his first matches back in short order to Apollo Crews – “short order” meaning four seconds.
While this was maybe supposed to lead to something for Crews, he ended up getting injured shortly after, so all it really did was harm Vinci.
Why WWE did that remains a mystery as they could have had a really popular talent on their hands, as evidenced by Vinci’s time in NXT 2.0 as a singles wrestler between his stints with Imperium.
Hopefully, this reemergence in TNA can give him some success.
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