Nick Aldis says he found out he would be facing GUNTHER at SummerSlam while WWE was in Saudi Arabia for Night of Champions, and that his first response was to tell the company he was not in shape to wrestle.
Aldis had not had a match since 2023 and had never wrestled for WWE, having worked as an on-screen authority figure since joining in October of that year. Night of Champions took place on June 27 at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, which left a little over a month before the show.
Speaking on WWE Now, Aldis said he raised it immediately with Ed Koskey, WWE’s Senior Vice President of Creative Writing, who sits alongside Bruce Prichard directly beneath Paul Levesque in the creative structure.
“That’s the first thing I told Ed Koskey when I first found out about this. Look, to find out quite out of the blue you can have a match with one of the top guys in the world, top guy in the company, at SummerSlam, in a stadium, amazing.”
The timing was the problem.
“But when he told me, that was in Saudi Arabia, and I went ‘When is SummerSlam?’ August 1. And today’s June 30 or June 29. I was like ‘That’s a month.'”
Aldis has stayed visibly in condition through his time out of the ring, and he drew a distinction between looking ready and being ready.
“I go ‘Ed, there’s a big difference between physique shape and ring shape and I am not in ring shape.’ You have an awful lot of faith in me to … because you know, without having too many conversations I had a pretty good idea of what it was probably gonna be.”
The match was not announced publicly until July 19, when Levesque made it official at the SummerSlam Kickoff event during Fanatics Fest, meaning Aldis knew for roughly three weeks before anyone else did.
He signed the contract on the July 24 SmackDown, giving up the SmackDown General Manager position to do it after Adam Pearce told him he could not hold the role and compete. Gunther powerbombed him through the table at the end of that segment.
Gunther beat Aldis on Saturday in Minneapolis. Aldis was reinstated as General Manager afterward.
