Part 2 of the “Battleground Podcast” interview with Nick Aldis has been posted.
Aldis talks about the new plans for the NWA, thoughts on Mickie James’ return to Monday Night Raw and more.
Nick Aldis talked about Billy Corgan in the COVID era: “The reality is Billy was kind of in a dark place about it. He was not very enthusiastic about anything. I think he was so disheartened by the circumstances. He wasn’t blaming anyone or anything. I could just tell that the whole thing had him down in the dumps. He was getting ready to tour stadiums with Guns N’ Roses. He’s got that major disappointment sitting on him as well. Wrestling fans, God love them, but they can be very demanding and be very invasive. They created these massive expectations. One minute, you do one good thing, you do one good show, or a successful PPV, and then it is, well, when are you going to have a whole roster? When are you going to have more belts? When are you going to have more TV? When are you going to have more PPV? Then you have one moment that slows momentum, then they say we are going out of business. It’s all over. This isn’t me blaming fans, but one of the main things that had Billy reluctant to make any moves and to do anything was he was reading all this stuff that NWA is finished. I think from a personal standpoint, he was like, I invested so much of my own money into this to try to make something to create an alternative for fans and create this product that fans will enjoy because he’s a wrestling fan. Suddenly, they are calling time of death on you and he felt betrayed. But, it took me and a few others who have had our own experience of the fickleness of the fans to remind him that it’s just recreational. It’s just something for them to do. You can’t take it too seriously. It’s just their version of gossip.”
Aldis denied the rumor that the NWA will be doing weekly PPV shows: “We’ve had a great relationship with FITE TV. Basically, we perform very well for them. Our PPVs outperformed certain big brands on their PPV platform 3 to 1. They are constantly checking in on us because obviously they make money from us. An option came up at a place called Thunder Studios in Long Beach in L.A It will be a combination of FITE TV and traditional PPV, On Demand PPV. They said there is a time slot here if you want to do something with it. So David put this situation together where he basically opened up the possibility to any promotion who wants to take part in it to have a PPV as regularly or infrequently as they like. We partnered with them on it because it’s a great opportunity for us to go into a new setting because the one thing we really didn’t want to do was go back to GPB without fans. If we were going to do something, we wanted to do it in a new environment and a new setting so it feels like a different show. Hopefully, one day when we can, we can get back to GPB and have our phenomenal fans who play such an important role in our atmosphere. It was a win-win. Basically, these shows will be regular weekly shows on PPV, but that’s not to say that the NWA will be doing weekly PPVs. It means that there is a weekly PPV time slot and the NWA will be occupying some of those. It starts on September 15. I will be on that show, as will several NWA talents. We are in the process of finalizing and securing my opponent for that. We think that if we can get this deal done, it will be a matchup and an opponent that is going to excite and satisfy the audience and the wider wrestling audience in general. Then we will get to work on creating more content to build to these PPV whenever we occupy them.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Battleground Podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
