Tony Nese is excited to enter an independent wrestling scene that looks vastly different than the last time he was there.
Tony Nese recently spoke with the Wrestling Perspective Podcast about his WWE release and his plans for the future. Nese started the conversation by saying the ‘Premier Athlete’ nickname is staying with him, then got into detail about how his WWE release went down. Nese tipped fans off early after posting a one-word Tweet on June 25, just saying “Welp.” He told the Wrestling Perspective that his post went out “less than a minute from when I hung the phone up” and explained how despite things ending the way they did, he’s still excited for his future.
“So it wasn’t a creative thing of like, ‘Listen, we’ve just got nothing for you’ or whatever. It was straight up what you hear on the internet, it was ‘budget cuts.’ The company is obviously trimming some fat and whatever their plan is, unfortunately, business is business,” Nese explained, “and I was on the shit end of that stick.”
“Honestly, the wrestling world has changed drastically in the last—I was pretty much working with WWE for five years. A little bit of that at the beginning, I was still doing independents, but I was there for five years and the five years, to me, it felt like twenty years because so much has changed. So much has changed in the company, and so much has changed in the world of wrestling, so not only am I excited because I’m getting to try this new world out now,” Nese said, “but on top that, I’m coming out of this way different than when I was going in.”
“When I was going in I was the kid trying to make a name for himself, so you pretty much do everything you can—and Petey knows exactly what I’m talking about—just going to some shows you don’t want to, or doing some jobs you don’t want to do, but you’re doing everything you can. So now, I’m going into this and now,” Nese explained, “yes, I have full control to be as creative and exactly what I want to be and do exactly what I want to do, so that’s exciting. It’s exciting now to have that control and a little bit of fire under my name now.”
Later in the show, Nese was asked if he saw his release coming. He said that it was a weird situation because he was a 205 Live talent and it felt like the writing was on the wall in that sense, but explained how it still caught him off guard.
“My relationship with pretty much everyone there as well as my work ethic, all of the things people would tell me, all that stuff, that’s the part where I kinda got blindsided with it. To be honest, in my opinion, I think it was 100% business-related and business is business. I can’t complain about it but in the long run, it’s going to be their mistake.”
Nese was released by WWE on June 25, 2021, and will be available to work elsewhere once his 90-day no-compete clause expires.
Check out Nese’s full interview with The Wrestling Perspective on the show’s YouTube or Twitch channel.
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