Aldis was able to take away a lot of positives from his time in NWA.
For the past five years of his pro wrestling career, Nick Aldis worked with the National Wrestling Alliance. Aldis had been the company’s Worlds Heavyweight Champion and served in roles behind the scenes as well.
Present day, Aldis is a free agent. Despite how his time with NWA came to an end, Aldis takes a lot more positives away from the experience than he does negatives.
He shared that information on The Universal Wrestling Podcast. Aldis stated that he taught himself how to edit while being at NWA and was making video packages for the programs he was in. He added that he was able to learn about the booking side of things and getting talents to feel comfortable coming to him about anything.
Well let me say this, I take way more away from it that’s positive than I do negative (his experience with the NWA as a whole). Things changed in the last year and that’s unfortunate but it is what it is. But man, I learned a lot because essentially, it was a lot of the stuff that happened, happened just through sheer force of will on my part. I taught myself how to edit. I was making the packages for my matches with Trevor [Murdoch] and you know, my match with Mike Bennett… So I think what I take away from my time at the NWA more than anything is that I’ve learned how to orchestrate and engineer that (a good story) as a talent and a producer. Because I had to be all of those things at the NWA, right? I had to wear a lot of hats so it was like, Cody [Rhodes] was the best example of it, the angle with Cody and I because it was like, okay, the hard part is done in the sense of there’s an arena with 11,000 people waiting for us. So how do we build this anticipation? Because usually, you have to do all that stuff in order to sell the tickets but on that occasion, it sold the tickets so we were like, ‘Cool…’ I learned how to share ideas, I learned how to manage people because a lot of the time, younger talent would feel more comfortable coming to me with stuff than they would maybe going to management, and I would be a sort of conduit between the two. I learned how to be a leader, but I also learned how to accept that there are things that you can’t control. I learned so much from my time but, I guess for me, the thing I learned the most was really the booking process. Instead of just thinking of one particular idea… when you work for a company, you might, ‘Oh, I have this one idea.’ But instead, having the responsibility to go, well here’s how we could get there and here’s how we could implement it and here’s how we could execute it and here’s the resources we have. I can make that happen and I talk to a guy who can make this part happen and I can figure out a way to get to this. What it’s done is it’s just given me so much confidence that, again, if I were to have the opportunity to do anything with better resources, now I feel very confident that I could make something, make some magic.
When it comes to him being a free agent, Aldis stated that it is a big deal for him, but feels everyone else is making a bigger deal out of it than he is.
Obviously for me, the significance of the year rolling over is the fact that, yes, obviously I became a free agent which I’m pleased about and excited about but you know, truthfully, I feel like everyone else is making a bigger deal of that than I am. Because for me, it wasn’t necessarily a case of, oh, I can’t wait to go somewhere else. For me, it was just more a case of, my time here is done. It probably should have been done a year ago, you know? (he laughed) But I decided to give it one more year and this time around, I went, no, it’s definitely time for me to move on and explore new opportunities… Things in this business, it’s like anything, you reach the point where you know in your gut you’ve done everything you can do and for me, that’s a big thing. I mean, I reached the same conclusion at TNA.
The 36-year-old Aldis is a part of the Oceania Wrestling fan festival that is being planned for fall 2023 in Australia. To read more on that, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Universal Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
