Tony Nese Says He Didn’t Tell WWE About Suffering A Torn Bicep Shortly After Getting Signed

Former NXT cruiserweight champion Tony Nese recently appeared on the House of Hardcore podcast to discuss all things pro-wrestling, which included his time in WWE (he was released two months ago) and how he once hid a bicep tear from them shortly after getting signed. Highlights from the interview are below.

Says he tore his bicep but didn’t tell WWE because it was right after he got signed:

I do have tears myself. I have a torn bicep on my left arm. That was an accident. I popped my hip when I was up top, then I popped my elbow and hyperextended my arm, and it snaped 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 hyperextended 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.

How he’s been wrestling without an ACL for years:

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.

(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)