During an appearance on the Wrestling Perspective podcast, Tony Nese addressed his release from WWE:
“So, it wasn’t like a creative thing of like, ‘Hey listen, we just got nothing for you’ or whatever. It was straight up what you hear on the internet. It’s budget cuts. The company’s obviously trimming some fat and whatever their plan is, unfortunately, business is business and I was on the shit end of that stick.”
“I’m coming out of this way different than when I was going in. Going in, I was the kid trying to make a name for himself. You’re doing everything you can and going to shows you don’t want to or doing jobs you don’t want to do. Now, I have full control to be creative and do what I want to do. It’s exciting to have that control and have a little bit of that fire under my name now…..the first feeling I got was, ‘Oh my God, what am I supposed to do?’ You start thinking about all the friends you made and people you added to your family circle. That’s the part that hit me at first. Then I thought, ‘I get to do so much more.’ I have so many friends out there who have left the company and are doing way better. The world of wrestling is different now. Not only working independent shows and making shows on the weekend, but the reach wrestlers have now with streaming services. That’s exciting.”
Nese also commented on his future:
“I feel like I’d fit in (IMPACT) perfectly. I feel like I’d fit in a lot of places perfectly. My options are still out there and I still have a lot of discussions to make. I’m not saying anything. Right now, my goal is to wrestle all the people I haven’t had a chance to wrestle. I have to brush up on my independent wrestling…..I have a lot of friends in AEW like Alex Reynolds and John Silver. Me and Alex have wrestled – he has it written down – but I think we’re at like 110 or 120 times. I’d love to add a couple more to that. But also, Kenny Omega, I wrestled him on an independent show in New York. It was a small show and he was on a long tour and just like, ‘Let me get through this without getting hurt.’ He’s one I’d love to get in there and have a banger with. Matt Sydal is another one. I’ve never worked with him, and he’s another I would love to mix it up with. I wouldn’t mind smacking MJF around the ring for a while. That would be fun.”
