Tony Nese Recalls Being In "Wrestling Purgatory" On WWE 205 Live
Former WWE Cruiserweight Champion and new AEW signee Tony Nese caught up with Chris Van Vliet about his time on the road with WWE, most notably his run on 205 Live. "The Premier Athlete" concedes that he would get frustrated with the direction of the show at times.
"To us, it would never make sense. We would pitch all these ideas, we thought it would be awesome that every once in a while you bring a guy onto our show that's a name. It would help the 205 Live brand and the talent. I would understand their mindset [on that], but they would do other things I don't understand and it would get you frustrated," he said.
"Why wouldn't you want to help everybody? I kind of feel like they had that core group of people where these are the ones we are going to care about, the rest of you have to hang in limbo. That's just how it felt. Maybe that wasn't what they felt, but that's how it felt while I was there."
Nese believes with more effort put into the show's production and creative process, it could have been something much grander.
"We would always say that we were in this wrestling purgatory. Even though I was there, when it comes to the company's decisions, I'm on the outside looking in too. This is all speculation, but it seemed like they had an idea for the show. It was Triple H's idea, it was his baby. He wanted the show to have a yearly tournament, win/loss records, all that stuff. He wanted it to be a different feel. As soon as it was announced that the cruiserweights would be a part of RAW, that was where Vince was like, 'No, it's my show now.' All that other stuff went out the window.
"We even joked about it, we said 'This is RAW-light.' We got our backs against the wall, and after all the stars had competed– so, Vince had control, but after a while, he was like, 'I'm done playing with this toy.' He gave it back to Triple H, who was like, 'You're Vince's boys now, you are tainted to me.' This is my speculation, but it feels like Triple H didn't care about it either. We were in this limbo of the show that has to be booked. But they were just like, whatever, put whatever on and just move on. No matter how much we would fight, they were just like, have a good match and that's it."