Tony Nese fully embodies the “Premier Athlete” spirit in AEW, but his course might have been a little different in the company without the backup of Mark Sterling.
The former WWE Cruiserweight Champion officially signed with AEW late last year after frequently appearing on AEW: Dark, later earning a title shot at the TNT Championship against Sammy Guevara. It wasn’t until earlier this year, though, that Nese found his true “spark.” The star soon aligned with “Smart” Mark Sterling, with Sterling acting as his manager.
In a recent appearance on AEW Unrestricted, Nese explained how their partnership was exactly forged. “It’s funny, actually, this early on when I first started, it was probably like week two, week three, whatever. A lot of the guys from Long Island, we kind of we all know each other. So, we all hang out. I would sit with Mark and all the other guys and stuff. He was mentioning, ‘Oh man, I would love to also manage a male wrestler.’ At the time he’s working with Jade [Cargill] and everything. He’s loving it, but he’s very limited to what he can do because it is the women’s division and stuff.”
“He was kind of like, ‘Oh man, I want to work in the male division because I want to get beat up by everyone.’ He loves that. So we started talking about it and I always thought that I would be presented better with a manager and everything as well. So I was like, Let’s go, let’s talk to Tony [Khan] and let’s tell him.'”
Nese continued explaining the duo’s brief dilemma as they planned to approach AEW President Tony Khan. Sterling cited some initial hesitation, as he still stood as the manager to TBS Champion Jade Cargill at the time. Tony Nese, though, felt their pitch would go over better with both of them present. “I said, ‘I’ll go talk to him, but if I go in there by myself, he’s going to think that I’m just trying to create ideas for myself,’ whatever it is,” Nese explained to Sterling. “I was like, ‘If we go in there together. He’s going to see that we both agree on this. We both like it, we’re passionate about it.'”
Nese and Sterling then pitched themselves to Tony Khan, with Nese doing “all the talking”. Khan responded well to the idea, and ultimately gave the approval. Shortly after, a series of ideas blossomed between the two. “We just keep constantly pitching ideas of like, ‘Hey, how could we screw up this guy or this guy’s run? Or can we pull the rug out from underneath from this person? And then in the end, give it right back to them and just have Mark somehow get destroyed?’ That’s literally how we plan everything, and it’s been so much fun. Adding Mark has been such a great spark to my career in AEW and everything.”
In recent months, Nese and Sterling have added Josh Woods to their alliance, effectively becoming “The Varsity Athletes”. Tony Nese later spoke about a different tag team partner of his, who he teamed with over a decade ago. Fellow AEW Talent Trent Beretta partnered with Nese during their early days at NYWC in Long Island, prior to the “Dudebuster” signing with WWE in 2008.
“He was about a year in or so, maybe a little bit longer. I just kind of started on the shows. We were two guys that just always stayed late together,” Nese explained. “We were always together in the ring, working together. So a lot of times when a promoter sees that, they’re like, ‘Alright, these guys would be good either working against each other or working with each other.’ So right there was the idea, ‘Hey, two young babyfaces let’s run with that.’ So they made us a tag team. We did it for a while until the idiot had to go and get signed and had to ruin a good thing on the Long Island independents. He was my first of many tag team partners.”
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