Nick Aldis (@nickaldis) is a professional wrestler and the General Manager of SmackDown. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss his match against Gunther at SummerSlam, whether he thought a match in WWE was actually possible, how he became the General Manager of SmackDown, if he was considered to face Randy Orton at WrestleMania, if a match with Cody Rhodes might be possible in WWE, hilarious segments with Chelsea Green and R-Truth, wrestling AJ Styles and Sting in TNA, what happens after SummerSlam, and more!

How are you feeling?

“Good. I think the big nerves are still to come, obviously. But I think because I feel like I’ve got my body right, now I feel a bit more comfortable. In the beginning, when I first sort of realized that this was on the horizon, I think my biggest concern was my physical ability. I don’t mean my ability to execute a bodyslam. I mean my conditioning. I suppose I should take it as a compliment that upper management didn’t seem to have very much concern about that. But I was very concerned, and I remember saying to Ed Koskey, there’s a big difference between physique shape and ring shape, and I only have one of those right now.”

But you look enormous!

“Honestly, I say this with all sincerity. My focus for the last couple of weeks, or a little more than that, has been entirely on conditioning, performance and conditioning. You’re not going to make a whole lot of difference to your physique in four weeks. Obviously, you can make some significant dent in your body fat and you can tighten up. But I’m not going to add any muscle. I’m not going to make any drastic changes to my proportions or composition or anything, but the focus had to be on being able to go. I basically just decided, okay, whatever happens with the physique, it is what it is. The physique’s somewhat there, so I have to be able to go.”

Did you always have it in the back of your mind that a match in WWE might be possible?

“Yeah, might be, but that doesn’t mean that this one didn’t come as a total shock, because it did. You know what’s funny? There were two people when there were other moments where it looked like that might be on the cards. Two people that said to me, ‘You have to stay somewhat ready because they’re not gonna give you three months’ notice. You’re gonna get like a couple weeks.’ One was Mickie [James], and one was Randy [Orton]. Because last year at WrestleMania, a lot of people felt like maybe that was a possibility. Was never discussed with me, you know, and even Randy even kind of leaned toward it on TV. But like I said, I try to make a point to stay out of it in that respect. I didn’t lobby for anything. But I remember Randy talking to me at WrestleMania and kind of saying, you know, you need to stay ready, because it’s gonna happen, and they’re gonna do it like that. It’s gonna come out of nowhere.”

I mean, there was so much buzz online leading up to that WrestleMania 41 match with Randy Orton, his mystery opponent. Did you think it could have been you?

“Yeah, it could have been. I mean, could have been anyone. It was a great spot for Joe Hendry. I thought it was a really entertaining segment. It was a great piece of business for WrestleMania. But had they decided, hey, it’s there, that would have been great. But I will say, this has real meat on the bone. With Randy, that would have been cool, but it would have been very much like a sort of, oh, hey, let’s have a wrestling match kind of thing. It would have been nice, but it would have felt very sort of, you know. This has some genuine emotion.”

Are you feeling the pressure?

“Sure. But I take confidence in the fact that they looked at everything, every possibility, and decided this was where the money was. I suppose I was a little perplexed at first at how casual everyone seemed to be.”

In what way?

“Hunter, Ed Koskey, Michael [Hayes]. I was waiting for the sit-down, ‘Are you sure you can do this? Are you ready?’ It never came.”

I saw a comment online. I’m curious what your take is on it. ‘How do we make the guy who’s the SmackDown general manager who wears suits every single week on SmackDown? How do we make him seem like a viable opponent for the guy who retired Goldberg, and John Cena, and AJ Styles?'”

“It’s a fair question. It’s a fair point. Well, I think we need to document my career. I believe that is in the works. I think it’s a bit of a crash course for the WWE universe. Is this is who this guy was before he came here? I think that’s necessary. Fortunately, there’s quite a good relationship with TNA and I believe with the NWA as well. So hopefully we can put together something compelling and substantial that really helps sort of fill that gap for people who don’t know, and the rest is up to me.”

You hit him with a line last week, where the guy who retired John Cena is going to get beat by his boss. I’m paraphrasing here. But where does it go from here if Gunther’s boss beats him in a match?

“I would say that that puts Gunther’s boss in a pretty high caliber of competition. I have to just concentrate on what’s in front of me. I have to deliver at SummerSlam. As far as I’m concerned, I am treating this as one match. I have no expectations. I had none coming in. I have none coming out. I just have to deliver, and trust my boss that whatever comes next is the right thing to do.”

I think there was this misconception that you weren’t wrestling; you were the GM because you were injured. Would you like to clear that up?

“Yeah, it’s funny because some of that was just some interesting timing. Because no, I was not put in that role because I was hurt. It wasn’t a case of being not cleared or needing time to heal up or anything like that. Having said that, it’s been wonderful to have some time to heal up, and actually the truth is, I probably did have some issues that I was not fully aware of until I actually had time for my body to heal properly. One being my back. Some of this was magnified by the fact that right around the time that, I don’t know if I had signed yet, but I was shadowing and I was coming to TVs and getting to know everybody. I had a few dates left, and one of them was one of them was going to be a return match with Alex Shelley at an independent show. I believe it was in Chicago, may have been Detroit. And for probably the first time in my career outside of being legitimately injured and having surgery was the first time where I had to call and pull out because my back was really bad.

 I’d had this sort of constant nagging pain in my back where it would really vary. Some days it would be fine, and then other days it would just completely ruin my whole day. And eventually, I remember being a couple of days out from the show and just calling the guy and saying, ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m just having trouble moving around. I’m gonna have to pull out; my back is shot.’ I went to Vanderbilt in Nashville and saw a specialist because it felt like I had a bulging disc or herniated disc. Turns out I actually just had huge inflammation. There’s like a thin sheet of muscle that sits behind your spinal erectus, I believe. Finally, this specialist at Vanderbilt was able to find it, and he goes, ‘Yeah, that’s why it feels like a bulging disc or a herniated disc. You actually just have massive inflammation in this muscle.’ He said, ‘You’re fine. Actually, your spine’s in pretty good order.’ I just got checked out at the Orlando Magic Facility in Orlando a couple weeks ago, and they said the same thing. The guy said, ‘Look, you know, you’ve got the spine of a 39-year-old wrestler, but actually in the scheme of things it’s pretty good.’ It just turned out that I just needed these specific anti-inflammatories. Cleared it up instantly. That was the thing that had been bugging me for like two years. So it was really just a case of just me being a stubborn idiot, and just sort of almost not wanting to know, thinking I’ll just figure it out, or I’ll just wear a back brace, or I’ll just do this, whatever. And all I needed was some anti-inflammatories, and it was just like something had just aggravated this specific stabilizer muscle, and it was just super inflamed.”

Are you the SmackDown GM right now?

“Technically, no.”

Where does it go from here?

“That’s not for me to decide.”

Is this the return of Nick Aldis, the wrestler? Because you kind of did the GM thing backwards. Most people have the illustrious career and then become the GM. You have this great career. You pause the in-ring stuff. You go be a fantastic GM for almost three years, and then now you’re putting that on pause, and you’re going back to the ring.

“Yeah, but a lot of that is just in the perception, because it’s never been presented as I’m coming back. So if that’s something that people are perceiving, I would argue that that’s almost maybe just because that’s how they want to see it. Like I said, I’ve been very careful not to try to project my own expectations onto any of this. I think we talked about this the last time I did your show. When the GM opportunity was presented to me, it wasn’t be the GM for a little while and then we’ll figure out a way. No, it was do you want to be the GM of SmackDown? I said yes, I’ll be the best GM you’ve ever seen. Because you play the hand you get dealt. Some of this stuff with Gunther is real, because he does represent the opportunities that I didn’t get, he did have people lobbying for him that I didn’t have. He didn’t have the TNA stink or different misconceptions about him that I had based on my relationship with this person or that person or anything like that. But I’m not presenting myself as a victim. I had those things come early, too early.

I got signed at TNA was 21. I was not ready for that spot, and I just have to sort of look back and make peace with the fact that what 21-year-old is going to turn it down? No one at that age is going to go I don’t think I’m ready. No, you just do it, and I probably paid for it down the line because then when I’m starting to hit my stride and actually really starting to get this, then my TNA career comes to an end. Now I’m in the wilderness, and then this other thing comes along because WWE is not interested. Because again, unlike Walter, I didn’t have guys like Regal pulling for me and saying, ‘Oh, this guy is fantastic. You want to give this guy a look.’ I had the opposite, actually. So I had to make something out of nothing with the NWA and the Ten Pounds of Gold. Then All In comes along, and again, it’s just been to me a series of validations. It was almost exactly one year from when we started doing the Ten Pounds of Gold series that Cody and I were standing in a sold-out arena like that was shaking before we even touched. It was Cody’s moment at the end, but it was my moment at the beginning. I will argue that point with anybody. It was a validation of what I had done. I build something, that relationship comes to an end. Things come and go. I knock on the door again. I finally get to reach out, and I finally get, 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. 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. It turns out nothing happens for a while. Then Bruce calls me and goes, ‘You want to work behind the scenes?’ Hey, I’ll take what I can get. Maybe there’s enough sort of consternation that I’m not being used on television. So then they go, you can be the GM. And now we’re here.”

Was there ever an opportunity 10 years ago or around that time to go to WWE?

“There was one period where my first TNA contract was coming up. I was flying back and forth from England. They were flying me in and out from England every other week, and it was killing me. I mean, it was absolutely brutal because they were house shows, pay-per-views. I remember doing a loop, that comprised of LA, Orlando, I think it was like Germany and Switzerland and something like that, some Europe, but not UK. Then back to the US, back to Orlando, back to the UK in the space of a week or whatever it was. I remember my then girlfriend. She picked me up, and I went back to her place. I was so tired, I fell asleep with my eyes open and she freaked out. She thought I was dead for a split second. She walked in and, ‘Oh my God!’ I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! I just fell asleep.’ She’s like, ‘Your eyes were open.’ I remember that was when I sort of went I think I need to relocate. I can’t keep doing this. So I basically say that to color the next part of the story, which was so now I’m sort of using that as a bit of leverage, because again maybe some of this did contribute to you know some people in management having a less than favorable opinion of me when I was a young cocky man, but I basically went back over all my previous year’s travel because with TNA they used to send you your travel, but it would come in the form of a travel agent receipt. Bob Ryder, God rest his soul, he was the head of travel for TNA, but he was also a travel agent, so it was all coming through his own. So you were basically just getting the sort of receipt, the printout. So I went back through like a year of flights, and I totalled up the entire dollar amount they had spent on flying me back and forth from the UK, which came to like 70 grand or something. It was huge. So I basically took that number and then said, ‘You paid me this much in year one, but you spent this much. I’ll move to Florida, and I take that number and put it into a guarantee for me, and I’ll move to Florida, and you’ll never have to worry about getting last minute.’ Because that was the thing. A lot of those flights were last minute.

It ended up working out. It went my way after Dixie got involved. I was going back and forth with Terry Taylor, and he was just doing his job. But he’s saying, we don’t do guarantee deals, and I’m going yeah, you do. Anyway, so you can imagine as a 22-year-old kid, that was pretty ballsy to be kind of making that kind of request. But I stood pretty firm on it. I was like this makes sense, and if I’m going to relocate, I’m going to pick up my whole life and leave my entire life behind. What difference does it make? I just want some kind of security. I just want some kind of guarantee. Ended up going my way. But there was a period there where he was doing his job, trying to make me think that it wasn’t going to go my way. So I reached out to WWE to Canyon Ceman, and I don’t remember. I’m sure he got emails like this all the time, but I just had my resume. I’d been on the I’d been on the TV show Gladiators. I think at that time, maybe Joe and I had been to Japan. I don’t recall. It’s a long time ago now, so your memories all sort of blur together. But I had a pretty good-looking sort of resume at that point. I remember distinctly getting an email back from him saying, ‘Wow, call me ASAP.’ So I call him and da da da, and then we’re talking a little bit more, and then he goes, ‘Wait, wait, wait, hold on, are you still under contract?’ I went, ‘Yeah, for like another like three weeks or something.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, we can’t talk. We have to end this conversation right now.’ He hung up on me. I was like, three weeks? But I was naive, you know. I didn’t think it was a big deal, evidently it was, and that was it. That was the only time where I thought, oh, there’s a bite here. Then because of that, in spite of the fact that obviously that conversation had ended quite abruptly, and I was a bit sort of oh no, did I just kind of ruin my chances there? I still just went screw it, basically a penned an email to Dixie saying, ‘I appreciate what you’ve done for me, opportunity, but I think I’m going to move on.’ And within hours, TNA came back with the deal I wanted.”

So how do you think you got this match with Gunther?

“I think that, and I have to tread carefully here because I certainly don’t want to ever try to speak on behalf of Triple H. But I think that maybe he looked at the landscape, looked at the possibilities, and decided I think there’s money in this over this guy or that guy as an opponent for Gunther. I only say that because that’s how I would look at it.”

How much thought have you put into your gear, your entrance, your theme, the whole presentation?

“Yeah, of course. This is WWE. I’ve been very, very flattered and humbled by, for example, when I said like gear, attire. I want Nick Aldis: The National Treasure. So there’s a little exclusive for you because I know there’s been a lot. There’s been some speculation about like, is he gonna wrestle in a suit? Stupid. Can you imagine? But again, I understand. Like sure, when I was a kid, nothing else outside WWF meant sh*t to me. I appreciated all the height of WCW and all that after the fact. At the time, I was like 10 at the peak of WCW. To me, I was like, That’s not the WWF.”

What is the match that people need to go back and watch? If they want to do their homework on Nick Aldis to see what you’re all about, what’s the match they need to see?

“I would say probably the rematch with Cody, NWA 70. The two-out-of-three falls in Nashville. It’s a really complete sort of story, and I thought we worked tremendously hard. The first fall is wrestling, very much wrestling, and then the second fall is sort of brawling out on the floor, and then the third fall is bombs away. Big finishing moves, kick out. So it’s sort of like you get a little bit of all three, and there’s some angle in there too. There’s some stuff with Kamille and Brandi. There’s a bit of sports entertainment. We have all the luminaries at the beginning. We have Dory Funk and some former champions and stuff like that. So I think the whole thing’s just a sort of fun, really good sort of pro wrestling main event feel to it, and it’s a good commentary too. Tony Schiavone and Jim Cornette are calling it, and I thought that was really good too because they all bounced off each other well. When you have guys like Schiavone and Cornette, it’s always going to take your stuff up another level.”

Fans know there’s some history here with Cody, especially that match you’re talking about there. Does that history possibly come over here to WWE?

“Who knows? I think that we’ve already leaned into it from time to time anyway. Again, trying not to speak on Hunter’s behalf. I think his general philosophy, when it comes to that kind of thing, is if you know, you know. So we can’t make it the whole story, but it can be part of a story, which I think has been a healthy approach to his storytelling. I think you could say the same for some of the stuff you’ve seen with guys who were in the Bullet Club. There’s nods to it, but you’re making it where you’re completely out of the know if you’re unfamiliar with what they’re referencing.”

When we talk about TNA, you were AJ Styles’ last match in TNA.

“It’s a dubious honor and something I’d probably rather forget. Was horribly booked, and it didn’t do me any favors.”

Now it’s the guy who retired AJ in WWE and the guy whose last match was against AJ in TNA, they’re going up against each other. 

“That helps. That’s probably the first time that any of that’s actually been of any use to me. Honestly, yeah. For a long time, I felt like that’s a lot of that. I felt like that got hung around my neck, to be honest. AJ’s TNA career came to an end, and that was such a tragedy for TNA fans.  I think a lot of that negative energy ended up being directed at me. I became the sort of face of it, and I didn’t have anything to do with it, I was just doing what I was told. So, I think for me, I don’t want to be overly dramatic here and say it was traumatic or anything. But it is definitely a part. It’s definitely something that I sort of tend to compartmentalize and keep locked away because that hurt my career. That was it. Was kind of the end of my TNA career too.”

You were Sting’s second-to-last match in TNA. 

“Even Sting hated that, because Steve Borden is an absolute class-act human being. For whatever reason, God bless, he took a shine to me and wanted to do a lot for me right from the start. I had a match with Sting in 2009. I’d been in the company like three months because Sting said, ‘Give me that guy.’ Sting had worked with Samoa Joe on a pay-per-view, and I think Joe had won the match. So the next episode of Impact, Sting just needed a win, just needed someone to beat just to sort of get him back on track. I’m pretty sure that he just said, ‘Give me that British kid. I like him.’ Because I was part of a tag team. There was no reason why I should have been having a singles match with Sting in the main event of Impact at that point in my career, I was 22 or whatever.”

You’ve had some great one-liners as the SmackDown GM. Which ones are you most proud of do you think?

“Oh gosh. Well, I think the one you said with Roman was definitely one. You know, ‘I’m an executive. I don’t have feelings.'” 

With Chelsea Green she’s like, ‘We’re talking about the United States Women’s Championship. You’re not even American! You’re like, ‘Neither are you, or you, or you!’

“Talk about someone easy to work with, there’s someone to bounce off of. That’s probably the most fun element of the role is the fact that you get to interact with all the different characters. You don’t sort of get siloed into well, I only really interact with other guys in the world title picture, or I only interact with other tag teams or whatever. One minute you’re doing like a really serious thing with Cody or Randy or whoever, and then the next minute you’re like with R-Truth talking about balls or something.”

What’s your problem with R-Truth’s balls?

“Ronnie is just the absolute best. Probably the most bittersweet thing about working with Ronnie is that the stuff that doesn’t make air is so goddamn funny. We will sit there and just riff for minutes before we actually do whatever we’re gonna do, and we’ll just be in tears, laughing, just bouncing off each other. Or he’ll text me later in the day, ‘I should have said this.’ He’s just one of a kind. He just has this energy and spirit that you just can’t help but smile. You just plug into that energy source, and it’s just the best.”

You had a backstage segment with John Cena where it’s this heated argument and Cena flips his hat backwards. This turned into a whole thing.

“That’s been memed a lot.”

That turned into a whole thing because people thought, ‘Oh, this is the Doctor of Tuganomics coming back. Why else would he put his hat backwards?’

“Literally, he just did it in the moment. But yeah, I remember right before he goes, ‘I’m gonna turn my cap around, You know, baseball? Umpire manager. I’m like, yeah. He’s like, yeah, think that. Great, cool.”

What is Nick Aldis grateful for?

“The support of my family, my family, and self-awareness.”

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