Nick Aldis wanted a WWE match for years. He says he never once asked for one.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight ahead of his match with Gunther at SummerSlam, Aldis said he made a deliberate decision to keep quiet.
“I can say with all sincerity, completely, 100% truthfully, I have never, never once gone to Hunter or Bruce or Michael or anyone like that and said, give me a shot, like let me have it.”
“Trust me, many times where I’ve wanted to, many times where I was in a certain situation, or I was witnessing a certain situation, and going like, I could fucking nail this. Or obviously, when it felt like it was heading that way with Randy or with Drew, there were times where there was part of me that was kind of maybe you should just go and ask for it.”
“But I didn’t. I held my tongue.”
The reason was something he had said when he first made contact.
“I tried to be a man of my word because when I reached out to Paul Levesque, I said I want to have the opportunity to contribute to WWE in any way you see fit. So I did not want to go back on my word, because I didn’t want to go, well, anyway you see fit, but really I want to do this.”
The advice that got him in the door
That email to Levesque happened because Diamond Dallas Page told him to stop trying to work through other people.
“Thanks to DDP, bless him, who just said to me, just call Hunter directly. Stop trying to go through these gatekeepers and stuff. Just reach out to him directly, and I thought that this could really backfire. But what do I have to lose?”
“Turns out, actually, it turns out it worked. Did it work exactly how I would have wanted? Of course not.”
What followed was a call from Bruce Prichard offering behind the scenes work, then the SmackDown general manager role.
“Then Bruce calls me and goes, you want to work behind the scenes? Hey, I’ll take what I can get.”
Stay ready
Aldis said two people had warned him that if a match ever came, it would come with almost no notice. One was his wife Mickie James. The other was Randy Orton.
“Two people that said to me, you have to stay somewhat ready because they’re not gonna give you like three months’ notice. Like you’re gonna get like a couple weeks.”
“I remember Randy talking to me at WrestleMania and kind of saying, like, you need to stay ready because it’s gonna happen, and they’re gonna do it like that. Like, it’s gonna come out of nowhere.”
They were right. Aldis said the Gunther match still blindsided him.
“That doesn’t mean that this one didn’t come as a like total shock because it did.”
