Nick Aldis Feeling ‘Nervous But Excited’ About Match Against GUNTHER At WWE SummerSlam

Nick Aldis discusses his in-ring return.

The in-ring return and WWE in-ring debut of Nick Aldis is scheduled to take place on night one of SummerSlam on August 1st. Aldis will be squaring off against GUNTHER.

Aldis had to temporarily give up his status as SmackDown General Manager to get the match made official. He spoke about how he’s feeling going into it as he was chatting with MuscleManMalcolm.

“I’m feeling nervous but excited. I’m feeling good. I’ve been just really immersing myself in crazy conditioning workouts… to try to get my conditioning where it needs to be, as best you can in a very short amount of time, for what is obviously a very tall order to be in the ring at SummerSlam with one of the real elite-level guys in our industry. I feel good, I feel nervous, in a good way. I feel excited, I feel validated. But I also understand that the work for me is to deliver at SummerSlam and that’s pretty much all I’m focused on.”

Aldis was asked if he’s interested in having more matches and said he’s fully locked in on SummerSlam.

He shared that he was a bit freaked out because everyone was so calm about him making his in-ring return. He said WWE producer Michael Hayes was the only one who talked to him about it.

“I am 100 percent fully focused on SummerSlam. I came into this with no expectations. I come out of it with no expectations. The demands are only on myself. I’m demanding of myself to put on a performance worthy of what I believe to be my pedigree and my level. After that, it’s out of my hands, right? It’s in God’s hands and it’s also about any number of different factors. It’s about the audience, it’s about our fans, it’s about the circumstances with what’s available. I didn’t know this was happening. I didn’t expect this to happen. So, I’m certainly not going to, then, you know, oh! Now I can do this and this and now it will lead to this… Early on, I had a couple of little freakout moments, where I was a bit sort of like, ‘Why is everyone so calm about this?’ Taking a guy who’s never wrestled here and you put him in a match at SummerSlam with a top guy. No one’s asking me, do you think you can do it? Michael Hayes was the only one who was like, ‘How you feeling?’ And Michael was the only one who said to me, ‘You just make sure you do whatever you need to do to be ready,’ and I knew what that meant. He’s like, don’t be afraid to say you need help or you want this or you want that… After a while, I suppose I just had to make peace with the idea that I guess they have faith in me,” Aldis laughed. “It’s difficult because obviously, being in the position I was in, you obviously do find yourself asking yourself a lot of internal questions like, did they think I was good enough? Why did they land on this for me? What is it about me that made them think that this is the right thing for me to do and all that? And then this comes along, and so then you go, well, doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Because now all that matters is I have to deliver at SummerSlam.”

The last time that Aldis wrestled was in 2023 for an independent promotion in Kentucky.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit MuscleManMalcolm with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.