Exclusive: Nick Aldis discusses NWA, All In, Cody Rhodes, Toxicity in TNA & the 'Spot-Monkey vs Old-School' mentality
This weekend, in 2018, the NWA is holding a wrestling PPV event on its 70th Anniversary. I imagine for many of you, if you'd have been told a few years ago that the NWA would be putting on a full show that you'd shake your head and not believe it. Because the NWA was dead, after all?
So how did we get here? Well, Smashing Pumpkins lead Billy Corgan and Ex-WWE and TNA creative Dave Lagana took control of the company and did something quite remarkable. They raised it from being an afterthought, resurrected it from the ashes and rebuilt the brand and the famous 'Ten Pounds of Gold' title to actually mean something to modern wrestling fans.
Someone else entirely influential to the rebirth of the NWA is Nick Aldis, also experiencing somewhat of a career resurgence after rising to fame in TNA as Magnus, even becoming the world champion there. Aldis, along with Lagana and the 'Ten Pounds of Gold' documentary style Youtube series, toured the world defending the title until he was able to set up a show-stealing match with Cody [Rhodes] at the huge independent wrestling event ALL IN. Thus also cementing the NWA as a relevant wrestling promotion again, as it should be!
The atmosphere was special for the Cody and Nick Aldis NWA Title match, and the result, Cody following in his father Dusty Rhodes' footsteps and winning the title felt like one of the biggest and most emotional moments in wrestling over the last five or so years. Now Cody and Aldis are set to do battle in a Best of Three matches at NWA's 70th Anniversary show in what is sure to be another special moment.
Read Also: Full card for NWA's 70th Anniversary Show revealed!
I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with Nick Aldis at Wrestling MediaCon in Manchester and talk to him about the incredible moment at ALL IN, and how the NWA is now rightly part of the wrestling conversation again!
"The worst thing you can do is try to engineer a moment like that because it's sort of hokey and weird" - Nick Aldis
I just wanted to add, that this interview was somewhat of an interesting experience for me, not just because Aldis was incredibly open and fantastic to talk to, and not just because the setting of the interview was a Star Wars themed cantina bar, but because, as Nick explained, he never goes anywhere without the camera, and he wasn't wrong as the whole thing was being recorded!
ALL IN happened and your match with Cody was perhaps the most memorable match of the night. Tell me how it feels looking back on it now, and just a little bit more about how it all came together
"Aldis: I had a vision in my head of how the night will go, I think Cody did as well, I think we all did, when you have something like that, you all create an idea in your mind, and obviously with the sell out happening so fast, thirty minutes, that element of it was nothing to worry about! So you go 'Okay, the buildings going to be full'. But then it came to how to get a reaction, we've done all this work, we've done all this build, we've made more effort than anyone else to make this title mean something, to make this match mean something, is it going to pay off?
But I think Cody felt the same and we had, obviously, a lot of chemistry. The thing that people need to remember about that match was that's the first time we've ever wrestled, and anyone who wrestles will tell you the first time you wrestle someone there's always a few kinks, there's a feeling out process.
And I believed it would, but there's no way of being able to predict exactly just how well it's going to work. reading the feedback and the comments during the build I got this impression that it's going to be special, it's going to be a big moment and then when we got to Chicago and we're around people. I did my appearance at Starrcast, I could feel this different energy for our match and I started feeling it, in my mind, because I had held on to this vague idea that we'd have a moment for the bell, but you can't speak it, you can't articulate it, because you can't plan for that, because the worst thing you can do is try to engineer a moment like that because it's sort of hokey and weird. I've seen guys try to engineer a moment like that and it's just tragic.
Next: Aldis discusses ALL IN being the biggest match of his career, why he loves working for NWA as opposed to TNA and whether or not there's a place for 'Spot-Monkeys' in the business.