Nick Aldis gives his side of the story.
On November 6, Nick Aldis revealed that he would be leaving NWA when his contract expires on January 1, 2023. NWA subsequently suspended Aldis for his comments. He was scheduled to wrestle Odinson at NWA Hard Times 3.
Speaking to Sam Roberts on Not Sam Wrestling, Aldis detailed his decision to leave NWA and where things went wrong with Billy Corgan.
Aldis began by addressing the video he posted, and then deleted, where he announced he would be leaving the NWA when his contract expired.
"I was planning to let my fans know that I had given my notice, but not in a nefarious way and certainly not in a negative way. I was just gonna let people know, ‘Hey, I’ve decided to move on. I’ve given my notice so that my final shows with the NWA, people would know that this is it. I thought, 'hey, this is a good opportunity to give something exclusive to my subscribers, and then a couple days from now, I’ll then let everyone else know.' Then those people will go, hey, this was worth it, hopefully. The whole thing about paywall content, it’s gotta be stuff that people feel is worth the money. It was my first time. I thought I had done everything right. I had clicked the little button that said ‘Subscribers only,’ but I guess, maybe because it’s real… I don’t know. I still don’t know. This is exactly how it happened. I was on the terrace on the condo. I decide screw it, let’s do that. Just very candid. That’s how I built my fanbase is authenticity. Then, when that was done, we had dinner reservations, and I was like oh, I got enough time to go get a little 30-minute cardio in at the fitness center. I go do 30 minutes of cardio, and by the time I come back, I see people going like, ‘Man, that was really great what you said.’ I’m going, wait a minute. I don’t think he’s a subscriber. That’s my friend. I don’t think my friends are paying to see my (content) [laughs]. I went, ‘Ugh, damn it.’ I deleted it. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered. I should have just left it, but whatever. But look, I gave my notice. I said I gave my notice, and I sort of alluded to why. It certainly wasn’t intended to be this sort of burial of the NWA or anything like that. Why would I do that? That would bury myself. The thing that I’ve been most heavily associated with for the last five years, and then I would turn around and go, ‘No, it sucks.’ No," he said.
During the interview, Aldis detailed why he felt the NWA product has changed and gotten worse.
"Look, I can’t get around it. I’m not saying all of it, but there was enough of it that, for me, didn’t pass the Harley Race test. I know that people will hear that and be like, ‘Harley Race? What the hell?’ What you have to understand, Harley Race wanted nothing to do with the NWA because of what it had been prior. It had some pretty dark days. Then he agreed, not only to be back associated with it. [He] asked me to come to Missouri to defend the title, agreed to appear on-camera, talking to me about being NWA Champion, and that ended up being the last interview he ever gave on-camera before he passed away. That means a lot to me. It was because of how we had presented pro wrestling consistently for three years at that point or whatever it was. We had consistently presented pro wrestling in a serious and dignified way. I know people will hear dignified and pro wrestling in the same sentence and say it’s an oxymoron, you know what I’m saying. I just found myself, again, this isn’t me trying to do scorched earth. I’m just saying this is what factored into my decision to give my notice. I started looking at stuff like Gaagz the Gymp, a social distancing match where the two wrestlers can’t touch each other. [fake laugh] On and on it went with different wacky, silly comedy nonsensical stuff, and I said, ‘How would I have justified this to Harley Race, if Harley Race had been here today?’ Imagine if I’d have been stood there with Harley Race, and what would Harley Race say watching this, or Dory Funk? Or Ric Flair?
"I thought, if I was stood here with those guys right now, I’d be kind of embarrassed. Because they would look at me and go, ‘This is you? This is your company?’ I’d have to go, ‘No.’ I didn’t want to be in a position where I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s not me.’ Because if I’m in, I’m in. When we first talked, I was doing the Ten Pounds of Gold Series. I got paid zero for those. I know that [Corgan] spent a lot time talking about, ‘I gave him this money.’ Well, we exchanged money for services. I gave you pro wrestling services in exchange for money. You didn’t give me money. Also, for the first year that we were doing business together, my money came from third-party independent promoters, it didn’t come from you at all. So I made all that content. I wasn’t getting paid for that. I was benefiting from it. I’m not upset about it, but I just think it provides a bit of context. I was very invested in building this thing."
While speaking to Busted Open Radio, Corgan was upset that Aldis buried the NWA and the talent with his comments.
When asked if he regret saying he disliked the product, Aldis said, "I'm sure that's the trigger. Yes [I regret it]. No, [I didn't do it to trigger him]. The truth is, I understood that a large portion of the NWA core audience evolved from being my core audience. The NWA, at first, it was me and Tim Storm. The success of that approach and the effort I put in, it's not easy to wear a suit and carry yourself and present yourself in a certain way when you know you're about to work a rec center in front of 100 people. That takes a different level of courage, 'I'm the man.' You don't think there were times when I didn't feel like a complete buffoon. This is 100 million miles away from WrestleMania. It starts [in your heart]. If you believe, they believe it. My career wasn't doing shit. I had to bootstrap that whole thing. I had a run in TNA, but by the time I left TNA, they had a stink. You would think, coming off a show that was doing 2 million viewers on SpikeTV on primetime, 'I've got to get an opportunity somewhere.' I was left holding the bag. I had to start from scratch. If I'm going to do it and commit, then I'm going to commit. When I see guys stroll into NWA Powerrr, march up to catering, stuff their faces, make another box to go, and me and Trevor aren't getting any food, do I start to get a chip on my shoulder? Yeah. 'You guys have no clue what it took to get to this point.' By the same token, I know what it's like to resonate with the audience and to pound the pavement. When people come up to me and say, 'you brought back wrestling that I love. I used to watch this with my grandpa and it brings back these memories of my grandpa and makes me so happy. He would love this and I wish he was around to see this.' That means something to me. When I saw it get betrayed, I felt betrayed too. The irony is, I'm sure he feels betrayed too. He believes in the product he's putting out now, and I don't. I'm sure, for him, it's a difficult pill to swallow. That's the business part of it. This isn't good for my business anymore, so I'm going to move on and see if I can do business some other way."
Aldis reiterated that he felt betrayed and was emotional about it until he looked at things as a business relationship.
Also during the Busted Open interview, Corgan said he didn't mind letting Aldis out of his contract if he got an offer from WWE and hinted that Aldis had an offer from elsewhere, which is why he made this public announcement.
"Yeah, I signed a one-year contract. Truthfully, they made me a nice offer with very favorable terms, one of which being that when it was time for the deal to come to an end, after the one year, if I wanted to exit the deal, which would continue on a month-go-month basis if not, I had to give 60 days notice. If they wanted to end the agreement, they would have to give me 90 days notice, so it was an advantage for me. They put that in, not me. I was like, great, that’s nice, I appreciate that. It was very amicable. As far as deals go in pro wrestling, obviously money-wise, it’s not anything compared to WWE or AEW, but in terms of structure, it was one of the fairest agreements, probably the fairest agreement that I’d ever signed in wrestling. One year, it had bonuses factored in for the production stuff because I started doing Ten Pounds of Gold. I took on that load after (Dave) Lagana left. So I’d been doing all that the year prior for no extra money. I made the Ten Pounds of Gold pieces for me and Cardona and a few other packages and stuff. Again, when that came up, I just kind of said, 'hey, I’m wearing a lot of hats here, and I’m not getting any extra for it.' All that I’m really doing is running the risk of putting heat myself. When you start wearing those hats, suddenly it’s like you’re office. I got put into a position once, for example, when Billy’s relationship with Thunder Rosa kind of went sour, he asked me to call her and intervene and stuff like that. I kind of went, 'dude, this is not my job. You have to understand the position you’re putting me in.' It was very uncomfortable, and it was little things like that just started to show the cracks where I was like you have to know what position that puts me in, but you’re basically putting me in it because you’d rather it be me than you," he said.
Aldis admitted that he called Rosa to say that Corgan asked him to call her, but that it was up to them to figure things out.
Providing more details on his contract and asking out, Aldis said, “Yes, that was the earliest time that I would have been able to do that. It’s not a release situation. It was a situation where, okay, we agreed for one year, but whenever I wish to end the agreement, I have to give 60 days notice. The earliest possible time that I contractually could do that was November 2. So that’s the day I did it. I was just trying to be professional about it. I typed up a letter and sent it, and copied my agent on it. As far as I was concerned, that was that. When I decided to let my fans know, it was not in a pipe bomb sort of situation. It was just, ‘Hey, here’s what’s coming up next. I don’t know where I’m gonna be next but I’m excited for the future.’ I'm not sure why I would need to get out of my contract early. Considering how patient I've been up to this point, I can hold on a few weeks. I don't know what to say to that. It just speaks to his level of understanding."
Aldis has been part of the National Wrestling Alliance since 2017 when Corgan purchased the company and has been the top act as the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion for the majority of the past five years.
When Roberts said that it was "alarming" that Aldis would leave, he replied, "I guess it shouldn’t really be alarming. It probably wouldn’t be alarming for people who had been following the product for the last [few years]. I’m sure for them, it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise. I understand what you’re saying and appreciate it. I tried to avoid saying anything like this because there’s no way to say it without sounding like you’re sort of self-promoting and being egotistical. Yes, I was the sort of the perennial face of the brand. I heard an interview, the interview that Triple H did with Ariel Helwani, and Ariel asked him about NXT and how it had changed. To me, his answers sort of mirror how I feel in a lot of ways about the NWA. It moved away from what I had wanted it to be. Again, much in the same way I suppose, not now, obviously because he’s running the place now, but at that time, he kind of had this, it seemed to me, he had this mentality of well hey, there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s sort of where I got to, with the NWA. I sort of went, what it’s become now is not what I envisioned it to be and it certainly isn’t what I was laying the groundwork for it to be. It didn’t have the core values that I had tried to sort of maintain. Again, this was not a knock. It was just me going, ‘This isn’t for me anymore.’ I wanted to do an alternative wrestling brand that represented all those things about the NWA that people missed in the current product, whether it be from sort of over-production or a different mentality or a different style. Let’s give them all their things because I felt like there was a good portion of the audience, particularly in the south, who missed ‘rassling. That was it. I wanted it to be burgers and fries, red-white-and-blue ‘rassling because I loved that stuff. It wasn’t because I hate high spots and I hate these other types, I hate sports entertainment. No, it wasn’t that. It was more like, looking at it from a business point of view. Hey, there’s a gap in the market I think for this type of product, and when I had the influence to sort of make that happen, like you said, we steered everything toward that vision, and it worked."
After 1043 days, Aldis lost the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship to Trevor Murdoch at NWA 73.
When asked when he thought the NWA vision changed, he referenced NWA 73.
"Year and change. So [NWA] 73, the first St. Louis show was, for me, was kind of like, once that business was transacted, it was never the same. Here’s the thing, the first thing that anyone’s gonna say to that and the first thing I’m sure Billy would say, ‘Oh, well, because he wasn’t champion anymore.’ The reality is that, prior to that, I had been sort of steering the ship because the world title angle was obviously, like in any promotion, the world title angle should be the one that really anchors the promotion. I had worked very hard for the last three years, well, even before that, because even when Cody (Rhodes) and I kind of traded the belt back and forth, I was still in the thick of it. I had worked very hard to make sure that every time I was involved in a world title angle that it was meaningful, it meant something. I felt, that was always the driving force. That was always sort of pulling the wagon. Obviously, when I wasn’t in that picture anymore, voluntarily, I would like to add. I was the one who said, 'I think it might be time for a switch here.' Here’s an opportunity, here’s all these things that are presenting themselves. St. Louis, Trevor, Harley Race, Wrestling at The Chase. All these opportunities presented themselves, and I went, there’s a moment there. There’s a piece of business to be done there. It was kind of my baby, and I hate getting into these pissing contests of ‘This is my idea' but that whole angle was kind of my baby. I [was] kind of soup-to-nuts [with] that whole thing. I also knew enough to know that it’s very important, it’s not just about losing the title. It’s what you do after," said Aldis.
He continued, discussing his idea to work with Thom Latimer.
"So I had a whole thing in place. ‘Here’s what I can do next.’ I can go into this program with Thom [Latimer]. Thom can turn on me because I’m not his meal ticket anymore. I lost the belt, now I’m no use to him. I’ll turn babyface because I knew that was coming too. I could tell at that point, there was just so much goodwill and sentiment. People knew what I had done. It was getting hard for them to continue to hate me because they kind of know he’s been, he QB’ed this whole thing. I was getting a lot of that. So I went, I think the time is right, I’ll be a sympathetic character. I lost in the middle in of the ring, I sort of passed the torch. I did business. I came back, the first thing the old-timers, Ricky Morton, Austin Idol, Ric Flair, the first thing they all said, they shook my hand and [said] ‘Thank you for doing business.’ That’s the way. I believe in the way. There are fundamental rules and principles of our industry, and I stuck to them. I always stick to them. I think that if you look at the guys who sort of go out of their way to kind of endorse me, it’s like Bret Hart, Harley, Austin Idol, Ricky Morton, Ric, Dory Funk, because they know that I respect the business, I love the business, and I try to do it the right way," he said.
Discussing the fallout from NWA 73 and whether things went down the way he had planned, Aldis said, "It’s irrelevant what I think about it. It’s irrelevant whether I liked it or not. The audience didn’t like it. So fast-forward, we get to the new year, and they can’t sell tickets. They can’t sell any tickets. So it comes back to me like, ‘What should we do? You’re the only person I trust?’ I get put in this really awkward position because I’m like, well now you’re forcing me to sort of advocate for myself, which I knew could be twisted and manipulated against me at any point. “Without saying, ‘It should be me.’ [laughs] ‘Hey, well, you know what you should do, brother. Put the old strap-ski back on me’, which I never said, by the way. I was presented with the question, ‘What’s different now? Why is it not working now compared to how it was?’ I sort of went, again, you’re forcing me to give you an answer that paints me in this awful light, but I’m going, the difference is, you had a world title angle that people were interested in, and now you don’t. You know what I mean? I don’t know how else to tell you that. That’s what led to [Matt] Cardona and then me and Cardona, and we got that going. Again, we got it going and we decided, hey, let’s stretch this out. Let’s get this going. Matt got hurt, and that was kind of, for me, when it all fell apart again. Then somewhere in there, I get the screw where suddenly it’s turned it, ‘Well you were advocating to get the belt back.’ I kind of went, woah, hold on. I made a point to say, when we had the initial conversations to include Pat (Kenney) and make sure that it was never a one-on-one so that that couldn’t happen. I kind of went, 'this is exactly what I was afraid of, so you know what, I’m bowing out. You do what you want.'"
Aldis said that Corgan talked to Aldis' wife Mickie James and said Nick was advocating to get the title back.
"This was something that he said to Mickie. He and Mickie had a private conversation that he didn’t realize that I was privy to. He goes, ‘Well, your husband is pressuring me to put the belt back on him.’ For me, that day I went, this isn’t a work," he said, noting that the conversation happened in "late spring, early summer" and that's when he decided he wanted to end the relationship with NWA, but was still under contract until January 2023.
During the Busted Open interview, Corgan stated multiple times that Aldis was working some sort of angle and admitted that the two were working an angle at NWA 74 when Aldis was removed from the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title bout.
Aldis said about Corgan's comments about working an angle, "He worked himself into a shoot. I'm trying to be nice here and say what's obvious for anyone who is paying attention. His lack of experience and naivety, that first time when it was an angle, when people reached out to me, I said, 'Yes, but...I'm concerned he's working himself into a shoot.' It does when you're inexperienced and you let this get to you personally. I've made mistakes in the past and had failed relationships in the past with people because I let it get personal when I shouldn't have. That's experience, maturity, and skin thickening. I've been in the business since I was 17, I have thick skin at this point. People have said the worst shit about me at some point or another, and I'm a double target because I'm married in the business too. I'm pretty conditioned, and I could see it coming. The whole thing that is so silly is, number one, I hate the fact that it paints me in this light of complaining or having problems backstage. Anyone who has been involved in the NWA knows that nobody put more sweat equity into that brand than me. There comes a time where you have to go, 'you have to move on.' If this were the territories, it would be, 'let's finish up.'"
Aldis' next move is currently unknown. Fans can check out the lineup for NWA Hard Times 3 by clicking here.
Fans can find Corgan's comments on the situation with Aldis by clicking here.
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