Tony Nese made an appearance on AEW Unrestricted to discuss a wide range of topics including being a fan of fellow AEW star Chris Jericho and more. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Not liking the chant of “Fight forever” from the crowd:
“It’s not a knock on anyone who gets that chant, but like, in my opinion it’s, well now you don’t care who wins, and I want people to literally want me to lose. I love the hate that I get a lot of times from people, especially like Twitter and stuff like that, like they hate me. When I see that, it’s like, it’s a job well done. I want people to absolutely despise my existence on the show.”
Jericho:
“I’ve never even said this to Jericho, but he’s my absolute favorite. He was my legend. He was my hero growing up and everything. It specifically takes me back to one vivid memory when Jericho won the championship from Triple H to open RAW, and then later that night to lose it back to him was literally the amount of emotions I went through in that, what was it, two hours at that time? The emotions I went through. I remember going crazy calling my friend up, like, ‘Oh, my God, did you see what happened?’ Like, I’m so excited, and then as the show went on, you start to realize things aren’t going so right and then he loses it at the end. I couldn’t eat. The next day at school, no one could talk to me. I was so upset.”
“That’s just a memory in my head of like, man, like, that’s wrestling to me, those emotions, whether you’re angry, whether you’re excited, and so like, that brought out the most emotions in me than anything else I’ve ever watched. From that moment, I was like, I’m gonna ride or die with Jericho. I’m gonna invest all my money in Jericho things, and I’m going to invest in his career. So he was always kind of a hero to me.”
“Then reading his books as well, or actually, like when I started training is when he came out with his first book. I’d read that all the time. I’d always spend an hour or so reading before I drove out to wrestling and it just kind of got my mindset of like, hell yeah. I’m gonna go and I’m gonna make a freakin awesome career myself and stuff like that. I’ve never told him this. I haven’t had too many long conversations with him because I’m like, I’m actually that superfan. Like anytime I’m around if he says something to me, I’m just like that awkward, I give a response that doesn’t even make sense, type of thing.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription