This morning I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with AEW star and former NXT cruiserweight champion Tony Nese for an in-depth interview, where the Premiere Athlete and I discussed honing his craft prior to signing with WWE, but how he really learned how different indie wrestling is from television wrestling. We also touched on whether or not he would ever consider forming a tag team in AEW, and if so, who he would choose as a partner. Highlights, including the full video interview, can be found below.
Whether he felt like he had his wrestling craft down prior to signing with WWE. How he learned about the difference between indie wrestling and TV wrestling:
At the time, yes, I definitely think I did until you actually go into WWE, and you start to realize, oh, man, there’s a whole other world to learn. Because, honestly, independent wrestling and TV wrestling are two completely different things. You’ll hear that from almost anyone who’s been through the system. It’s always very funny to me, because it’s hard to compare. I understand on a fan standpoint, it’s all the same. But to a wrestler who does it like it’s really hard to compare, like, an indie wrestler or an indie promotion. Something like WWE, and even now AEW becoming more prominent on television, and you can tell they’re kind of learning more and more the television aspect of it, rather than just a large live event. So, yeah, I mean, there was just so much to learn. So going into it, yes, I felt technically sound, I felt physically sound. And I thought…I definitely feel like I knew my craft, but then when it came to learning about cameras and cuts, time and all that stuff, that was the big learning process, but it was kind of fun, because it was a whole other world to learn. And we would try to get training, like I trained in Long Island out of NYWC. We would practice as much as we can work and do hard cam work and work times and stuff like that. But until you’re really in that situation, you don’t really realize how stressful it can get.
If he were to ever compete in the AEW tag team division who would he choose as his tag partner:
I would say right now a good one that I would love to do again, is Trent Beretta. Probably almost no one knows this but me and Trent were a tag team before he went to WWE. Interesting. He was Plasma. And I was Maverick. I don’t I don’t know why. We teamed up for a while. He was probably one of the first people I clicked with as a tag team. We kind of had the same style and the same ideas and the same…you know, we love watching the same stuff, studying the same stuff, because like, we kind of trained together. And then when I started training, we kind of linked up and I would always go to his house and we’d watch like Hardy boy tapes and stuff like that. And like, yeah, we loved all that stuff. So so he would be fun to partner up with again.
Also mentions reuniting with Ariya Daivari:
During the last like year of us being in WWE we teamed a lot together. We helped keep each other safe, sane, just kind of sticking together and stuff. So he’s become like my best friend. So he’d be I would love to continue teaming with. They actually have him going in another direction with someone else right now so so I guess I’ll have to ask Trent if he wants to be my partner.