WWE SmackDown General Manager is the guest on the latest “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet” show on YouTube. Scroll down to watch the entire interview.
Nick Aldis on becoming the SmackDown GM:
“I mean, look, my whole thing on this was I had to make it my own and I had to create, to me, in my mind anyway, and this is also based on some early conversations with Hunter about it. He said ‘I want this to be different. Your General Manager schtick is not going to be the typical authority figure we’ve seen necessarily in the past. You’re not necessarily going to be this obviously, there’s been some major differences between some of the characters you’ve seen in those roles, but it wasn’t necessarily going to be this sort of insecure, power-hungry, sort of guy right off the bat.’ He said, ‘I want you to be more you, kind of calm and collected and all business.’ I went, ‘I think I know what you want.’ Obviously, there’s a lot of coaching involved and stuff like that. In the beginning, I was like, ‘I think I’ve got what you have in mind.’ We sort of went that way, and it seemed to work.”
On if his in-ring career is over:
“I don’t necessarily see it like that 100%. I see it more as a sort of maybe not a full-time wrestler, but I don’t know. Look, it gets asked all the time of course by everyone except me. I have never once said, ‘Hey what about me? Could I wrestle’ because I don’t need to. If and when the time comes, it’ll be what they want, and it will hopefully be the right time. I just told them that if you want to do that, I’m ready.”
On being a fan of Triple H while growing up:
“I was introduced on WWE television in a Triple H in-ring segment. If you’d have told the 13-year-old Nick Aldis that, he would have fallen out of his chair. Hunter was my guy. I loved Bret when I was a kid, but I saw Bret like a superhero. When I first started formulating this idea of I think I want to get into this business, actually get into it, it was because of Rock and Hunter. It was their feud in 2000, but as much as The Rock was the man who captivated my imagination like so many of us who are in the business, probably half the roster if they were honest with themselves, it was Rock, but for me, I was watching Hunter, and I realized without articulating it at the time, I was studying him because I was sort of going, well, he’s got a self-awareness. I don’t think I can be that guy, talking about The Rock because I’m not American, number one, and I’m more cerebral. I had a bit more of that. I could relate more to that approach. I think people who are familiar with my in-ring work see a lot of Nick Bockwinkel, who I studied a lot, Harley Race, and a little bit of Flair. I think if you look at Hunter, it’s quite a similar combination.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
