During an interview with Sam Roberts’ “Notsam Wrestling,” Nick Aldis gave his side of the story on the issues with Billy Corgan’s NWA. Aldis said giving his notice to the NWA was not intended to be a burial of their product:
“I gave my notice and I sort of alluded to why. It certainly wasn’t intended to be this sort of, you know, burial of the NWA or anything like that. Why would I do that? I would just be burying myself. It’s the thing that I’m most heavily associated with for the last five years.”
On why he left:
“It moved away from what I had wanted it to be. What it’s become now is not what I envisioned it to be, and certainly isn’t what I was laying the groundwork for it to be. It didn’t have the core values that I had tried to sort of maintain. Again, this was not a knock. It was just me going, ‘This isn’t for me anymore.’ I wanted to do an alternative wrestling brand that represented all those things about the NWA that people missed in the current product, whether it be from sort of overproduction or from, you know, a different mentality or a different style. Like, let’s give them all those things because I felt like there was a good portion of the audience, particularly in the south, who missed rasslin. That was it. Like I wanted it to be burgers and fries, red, white and blue rasslin because I love that stuff. But it wasn’t because it was like I hate high spots and I hate sports entertainment. No, it wasn’t that. It was more like looking at it from a business point of view. Hey, there’s a gap in the market I think for this type of product. When I had the influence to sort of make that happen, like you said, we steered everything toward that vision and it worked.”
On when he felt the direction of the NWA changed:
“So 73, the first St. Louis show for me was kind of like once that business was transacted, it was never the same. Here’s the thing, the first thing that anyone’s gonna say to that and the first thing I’m sure Billy would say, ‘Oh, well because he wasn’t champion anymore’, but the reality is that prior to that, I’d always sort of steered the ship because the world title angle was obviously, like in any promotion, the world title angle should be the one that really anchors the promotion. I had worked very hard for the last like three years, well even before that, because even when Cody and I kind of traded the belt back and forth, you know, I was still in the thick of it. I’ve worked very hard to make sure that every time I was involved in a world title angle, you know, that it was meaningful. It meant something. Because of that, that helped, I felt was always the driving force. That was always sort of pulling the wagon. When I wasn’t in that picture anymore, voluntarily, I was the one who said, ‘I think it might be time for a switch here.’ Here’s all these different things that are presenting themselves, St. Louis, Trevor, Harley Race, you know, Wrestling at the Chase, you know, all of these opportunities presented themselves and I went, there’s a moment there. Like, there’s a piece of business to be done there. It was kind of my baby, you know, I hate getting into these pissing contests of, this was my idea, but that whole angle was kind of my baby, like, kind of soup to nuts, that whole thing. I also knew enough to know that it’s very important, it’s not just about losing the title, it’s what you do after. So I had a whole thing in place. Here’s what I can do next. I go into this program with Tom. Tom can turn on me because I’m not his meal ticket anymore. I lost the belt. Now, I’m no use to him. I’ll turn baby face because I knew that was what it was coming to. You know what I mean? I could tell that there was so much goodwill and sentiment around, kind of people knew what I had done. You know, they sort of knew, like, it was getting hard for them to continue to hate me. So when, you know, I think the time is right, I’ll be a sympathetic character. I lost in the middle of the ring, you know, and I sort of passed the torch. I did business.”
“Fast forward. We get to the new year and they can’t sell tickets. So it comes back to me, like, ‘What should we do? Like, you’re the only person I trust.’ I get put in this really awkward position because I’m like, well now you’re forcing me to sort of advocate for myself, which I knew could be twisted and manipulated against me at any point. I was presented with the question, ‘What’s different now?’ You’re forcing me to give you an answer that paints me in this awful light. The difference is you had a world title angle that people were interested in and now you don’t I don’t know how else to tell you that.”
“That’s what led to Cardona, and then me and Cardona, and we got that going, and we decided to, hey, let’s stretch this out. Let’s, you know, let’s get this going, Matt got hurt and then again, that was kind of me when it all kind of fell apart again. Then somewhere in there, I get the screw, where suddenly it’s turned into ‘Well, you advocating to get the belt back’, and I kind of went ‘Whoa, whoa, hold on.’ I made a point to say when we had the initial conversations to include Pat and make sure that it was never a one on one so that that couldn’t happen. I kind of went, ‘This is exactly what I was afraid of. So you know what? I’m bowing out. Do what you want.”
On why he re-signed his contract in January:
“I signed a one year contract. Truthfully, they made me a nice offer with very favorable terms one of which being that when it was time for the deal to come to an end, well, after one year, if I wanted to exit the deal, which would continue on a month to month basis, if not, I had to give 60 days notice. If they wanted to end the agreement, they would have to give me 90 days notice which is an advantage for me. They put that in, not me. I was like, great. That’s nice. I appreciate that. You know, it was very amicable. As far as deals go in pro wrestling, like, obviously, money wise, it’s not anything compared to like WWE or AEW, but in terms of structure, it’s one of the fairest agreements, probably the fairest agreement that I’d ever signed in wrestling. You know, one year. It had bonuses factored in for, like, the production stuff.”
On why he gave his notice in November:
“That was the earliest time that I would have been able to do that. It was a situation where like, Okay, we agreed for one year. but whenever I wish to end the agreement, I had to give 60 days notice. The earliest possible time that I contractually could do that was November the second. That’s the day I did it. I was just trying to be professional about it. I just typed up a letter and sent it and copied my agent on it. As far as I was concerned, like, that was that. When I decided to let my fans know, it was not in a pipe bomb, you know, sort of situation. It was just, Hey, here’s what’s coming up next. Like, I don’t know where I’m gonna be next, but I’m excited for the future.”
On if he was embarrassed of the NWA product:
“Look, I can’t get around it. I’m not saying all of it, but there was enough of it that for me didn’t pass the Harley Race test. I started looking at stuff like Gags the Gimp, you know, a social distancing match where the two wrestlers can’t touch each other, ha, ha, ha. and, you know, on and on it went with different wacky, silly comedy, you know, nonsensical stuff, and I said, ‘How would I have justified this to Harley Race, like if Harley Race had been hit today? Imagine if I’d have stood there with Harley Race. What would Harley Race say watching this? Or Dory funk? Or Ric Flair?’ I thought if I stood here with those guys right now, I’d be kind of embarrassed. You know what I mean? Because they would look at me and go, ‘This is your thing?’ I have to go, ‘No’, and I didn’t want to be in a position where I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s not me.’”
On the effort he put into presenting himself as a star:
“It’s not easy to wear a suit, and like, carry yourself in a certain way and present yourself in a certain way when you know you’re about to go work in a rec center in front of like, 100 people. Sure, that takes a different level of, like, courage, right? To be like, I’m the man. You didn’t think there were times where I didn’t feel like a complete buffoon, you know, thinking this is 100 million miles away from WrestleMania. But I also understood the whole point of the business, and again, this is like an old school thing that was driven into me by guys like Harley and Dory and other people. It starts in here. If you believe it, they believe it.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Sam Roberts with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
Click below to listen to the entire interview.
