During this week’s special Saturday episode of AEW Dynamite, the former WWE Cruiserweight Champion, ‘The Premier Athlete’ Tony Nese made his first live appearance in typical wrestler-in-crowd fashion. For the first time in a very long time, Tony Nese looked like a star worthy of being an attraction. Even though Nese didn’t achieve much else other than his WrestleMania pre-show moment against Buddy Murphy, he’s a performer with oodles of talent and charisma that have been left untapped for way too long.
As part of 205 Live, Tony Nese was one of the most consistent wrestlers under the WWE umbrella, putting in countless incredible performances against his cycle of rivals that included Drew Gulak, Akira Tozawa and Ariya Daivari. Nese’s match quality would often go unnoticed by the fans, which isn’t something we should be blamed for, considering the total lack of effort put into marketing 205 Live’s weekly show. Nese could have easily transitioned from the Cruiserweight roster into something more meaningful on the main roster, perhaps a run in the tag division or something in the mid-card. Alas, he remained tucked away in the shadows of 205.
Now that Nese is free from his WWE contract and regularly competing on the indie circuit, he’s ready to unleash that side of him we weren’t treated to as much as he would have liked. With AEW now all but confirming his active contract, ‘The Premier Athlete’ is about to join a slew of the very best wrestlers on the planet, and I see this leading to a very bright future in the coming months.
Nese reminds me a lot of Bobby Fish in the sense that his arrival in AEW will be somewhat understated, but have a huge impact nonetheless. Fish was one of those wrestlers that you couldn’t imagine having much of a singles career after his run in NXT, yet he’s delivered two impressive matches against Bryan Danielson and Sammy Guevara and is now set for a singles match with CM Punk. Tony Nese will likely have the same sort of run to begin with, perhaps ticking off a couple dream matches with some of the light-heavyweight stars, Jungle Boy and Darby Allin perhaps, getting really stuck into those matches and showing off his best stuff. With the fans pleasantly surprised by what Nese has to offer these days, he’ll soon find himself featured in more prominent matches, and voila, we have a ready-made star.
Tony Nese is a rare kind of athlete that impeccably combines both speed and strength — it’s just about finding the right match for ‘The Premier Athlete’ to really show off what he can do. When given a reason to care, Nese was up there as one of the top performers on the WWE roster, so with him now being apart of the AEW roster, it’s very much a sink or swim scenario. Although, considering the wealth of talent available for these exhibition matches and the level of passion and creativity being put in to all aspects of AEW programming, I don’t see a reason for anyone to believe that Tony Nese won’t fit in with the rest of the stars of All Elite Wrestling.
Again, Tony Nese could easily fit into a singles or tag role as part of the AEW roster, either to help elevate newcomers like Dante Martin or to build his own legacy and eventually capture some sort of championship. I can’t wait to see how far AEW run with Tony Nese and the 5* classics we’ll see him deliver on a weekly basis now that the world’s attention is solely on him. Get ready for something special in the coming weeks.
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