Watch Kevin Gates Punch Out Wrestler Tony Nese On AEW Dynamite
All Elite Wrestling is a company that employs actual musicians, like God’s Hate frontman Brody King and former Every Time I Die guitarist Andy Williams, as full-time wrestlers. Every once in a while, AEW also brings in stars for cameos; earlier this summer, for instance, Rancid showed up to play Ruby Soho, a wrestler named after one of their songs, to the ring for her big pay-per-view championship match. Last night, AEW Dynamite broadcast live from Atlanta, and the show included a few random-ass musician appearances, like Jermaine Dupri walked Jade Cargill to the ring. And during one moment from the show, Kevin Gates had to punch someone out.
Gates, the great Baton Rouge rap star, was on the show as the guest of Swerve In Our Glory, the tag team of Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee. Last week, Swerve In Our Glory won the AEW Tag Team Championship in a wild, thrilling three-way match. This week, they held their championship celebration. These things never happen uninterrupted, and this one was derailed by bad-guy manager Smart Mark Sterling and his client Tony Nese. Sterling has lately been doing this thing where he tries to get people to sign a petition to get Swerve fired from AEW, and he came out during the celebration to get Gates to sign his petition.
Sterling is good in the funny-asshole role, and we get a lot of that in this segment: “I saw Kevin in the back! I got excited; I thought it was Young M.A! It’s not! It’s not, but Kevin’s cool! He’s got two phones!” Naturally, this led to Kevin Gates refusing to sign the petition, Sterling telling Gates that his music sucks, and Gates taking out Tony Nese with one punch. (Kevin Gates honestly looks like he could hurt Tony Nese, so it didn’t shatter the carefully maintained sense of pro-wrestling reality too much.) Also, Smart Mark Sterling got a cake splattered on his face. Wrestling loves cake to the face. I’m pretty sure there was a Westside Gunn cameo at the end of the segment, too, but the YouTube video cuts that part off. Watch it all happen below.
Gates is not the first rapper to get physical with the wrestlers on Dynamite. Who could forget Snoop Dogg hitting a supremely awkward top-rope splash on Serpentico last year?
It remains to be seen whether we’ll get an actual Kevin Gates wrestling match out of this, but, I mean, I’d watch. He’s got two phones!