Tony Nese recently appeared as a guest on the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During his appearance on the program, Nese spoke about signing with AEW, appearing in the crowd at Dynamite, who he wants to work with in the company and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On signing with AEW: “This is awesome. It’s been a blessing.”
On his appearance in the audience on AEW Dynamite: “I got invited to go and it was like, ‘Hey, would you like to come down to Orlando, we know you’re in Orlando as well.’ ‘Yes, absolutely.’ I had been there earlier. During my 90-day non-compete I went there as a guest just to hang out with my friends. In that company, I have tons of friends and people I’ve traveled with a lot on the Independents, so I just went to visit. Everyone was super cool and super nice and it was definitely a good place and I think people liked me. Then they invited me to Orlando and it was literally like 10 minutes before they went live and they pulled me aside and were like, ‘Hey, would you be cool to site out in the crowd and we keep showing you on camera?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, why not? TV time? I’ll take it.’ I just sat out there and when they asked me at first I was laughing like, ‘is the house low? do you need me out there cheering or something?’ Then he explained it to me and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome.’ From there, we got to discussing where to go. Honestly, it was super cool the way they treated me off the bat like, ‘Hey, let’s build you up as a star and bring you in as a star,’ just like they should anyone else. I’m definitely appreciative of that.”
On who he wants to work with in AEW: “There are the obvious ones when you look at CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Kenny Omega. Also, I can’t want to get back in the ring with Alex Reynolds, John Silver, Ethan Page. These are guys that I wrestled on the Independents and we hit it off and our chemistry was always amazing. I can’t wait to be able to have those same matches that we did in front of 100 people in front of thousands now and show that chemistry. When I first got into WWE, you start thinking of all the names and possibilities but then you start seeing the way they’re using you and you see that fade away. On 205, everyone was awesome and we were a tight group, but we wrestled literally every week the same people over and over. This is exciting. I’m not being pigeonhole into one thing anymore. This is like, ‘Hey, it’s an open field now.’ One day you could be wrestling an extra and the next week I could wrestle CM Punk. They’ve already shown that anything is possible there. Super exciting. Other names; the Young Bucks. I’ve had some really really fun matches with them. I actually owe a lot to them with helping me breakout on the independent scene and working my way to the west coast. I hope I get to wrestle everyone. It’s going to be fun.”
Check out the complete interview at Apple.com. H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes.
