Tony Nese Says He Hid Bicep Injury From WWE So He Wouldn’t Get Released
Photo Credit: WWE
Former WWE Superstar Tony Nese saw his time with the company come to an end last month and recently sat down with Tommy Dreamer on his ‘House of Hardcore’ podcast to discuss his time with the company.
Nese revealed that shortly after signing his WWE contract he sustained an injury to his bicep but decided to hide it from WWE because he did not want to risk getting released. He said “That was an accident. I popped my hip when I was up top, then I popped my elbow and hyper-extended my arm, and it snapped my bicep. I wrestled two days later on TV. I just got signed at the time and I was really scared to tell them that I tore my bicep. So, I just hid it and wrestled on it. I’m sure that’ll be all over the internet. They know already, they didn’t care. As soon as it happened, I looked at my wife and was like, ‘I think my career is over. I think WWE is going to release me.’ Then, I started going through denial like, ‘I think I just hyper-extended it, it’ll be fine.’ It was so swollen, you couldn’t tell. Then, as the swelling went down, I realized it was torn. At that time, luckily, the pain was gone and I didn’t even bruise from it. It was just snapped and that was it and I moved on from it.”
Continuing on, Nese discussed wrestling without an ACL, which he’s been doing for quote some time now. He said, “Years before I started doing House of Hardcore, I tore my ACL in my left knee. I’ve been living without it in my left knee since then. It was at a PWG show. I was doing a dive and went right over my opponent. Landed right on my leg and it popped out to the side. I took two weeks off and was right back in the gym. I was on my way to go to Japan for Dragon Gate. It was a week before and the swelling in my knee wasn’t going down. I went to a surgeon to see if he would drain it for me. He wanted to do an MRI and tells me everything. It was a fully torn ACL, a partially torn PCL, MCL, and both meniscus torn. He was like, ‘we should do surgery tomorrow, you shouldn’t even be walking.’ That morning, before I went to the doctor, I was doing box jumps and I thought I would be alright. I just wrapped it up and went to Japan.”
You can listen to the entire interview below. Thanks to Fightful for providing transcriptions of the interview.