Aldis gets into his trial run as a WWE producer.
For close to a full month, former NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis has been on a trial run as a producer for WWE.
The 36-year-old dove into that during his chat with Chris Van Vliet. He stated that he wore a lot of hats at his ‘last place’, so it does not feel like a completely new situation. Aldis said it is a handshake agreement between himself and WWE at the moment. He added that the company has been good and accommodating to him.
They (WWE) just invited me to come and, you know, see how everything works and shadow as a producer and see and just sort of be part of the meetings and oversee the whole television operation… I’ve done a lot, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I think people who have followed my career, particularly in the last few years know that in addition to wrestling, I was wearing a lot of hats behind the scenes at my last place. So, I certainly don’t feel like it’s a completely new sort of situation for me. Having said that, there’s pro wrestling, and then there’s WWE. So, just taking in just the sheer sort of volume of the operation, and just, you know, the number of people involved… the scale of everything is like — just that alone has been the basis of my time so far. But, it’s all very much much a sort of handshake situation at the moment, very much a, ‘Hey, why don’t you come in and see how all this works? See if you like it.’ I will say this. They’ve been very, very good to me and very, very accommodating. As far as they’ve said, look, this is as much about whether you like it, you know? Now, where that goes, I don’t know, and I’m okay with that. It’s tough with the internet and social media, because people want to put this sort of definitiveness on everything. And this finality like, ‘Oh, that’s it. He’s with WWE. That’s it, game over,’ you know? And so now, people say, ‘Are you not wrestling anymore? Have you retired? Are you not wrestling?’ I mean, even the boys are saying that, like, ‘Are you done wrestling?’ And it’s like, slow down.
Aldis would go on to admit that the timing of the opportunity was not the best. He said the assumptions came that he could not wrestle anymore because he pulled out of dates due to injury around the time his trial run started. Aldis still has select independent dates lined up.
The timing of that, I can accept and concede that (pulling out of dates due to injury when his trial run as a WWE producer was starting). And I knew that even when I did it, you know, it was kind of mad at the timing of this isn’t great, because now people are going to put two and two together and go holy, you must be injured, you must have a back problem and can’t wrestle anymore. That’s not the case… 100 percent (I can still wrestle). I just took a couple more dates recently. You know, I have a few days in September. I know that Mickie (James) and I (are) doing a show in Canada at an Indian Reservation. And it’s another show in Ohio that we’re both doing and you know, so I mean, I’ve had stuff on the books, and I told Bret (Hart) that I would whenever he has a date for Calgary. Yeah, that because I’m the Stu Hart, you know, champion for his son’s promotion for Dungeon Wrestling. I was like, ‘Look, I’ll always be there for that…’ That’s the frustrating part, right? Is when you literally go and try something and just go and see, try it on, see if you like it. And next thing you know, it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s it.’
In early August, Aldis pulled out of several bookings and cited a back issue as the reason why. He touched on that issue and said it got to a point where he was struggling to get out of bed to get dressed. The injury turned out to be inflammation that was getting aggravated so he took time off.
It was an injury… I’m sure I have any number of underlying long-term issues, like any wrestler who’s been doing it for, you know, 15 years would have but no, I had an actual back injury. I can’t remember the thing that I injured, but it was the way that they described it was like a sheet, like, there’s a thin sheet of muscle, your lower back that can sometimes just get sort of strained and inflamed. So while it felt like a disc issue, and I’m — I’ve had MRIs and stuff like that, to rule all that out, because of course, the first thing you start thinking of is, oh God, you know, it’s a disc. And by the time I went, oh, I’m not alone on that, like most wrestlers I would say in this sense that by the time we go to the doctor, it’s like, well it’s serious. If we’re going to a doctor, it’s because it hasn’t gone away with ice and some Advil or whatever, right?
I take a lot of pride in the fact that in most of my career, I think, with the exception of when I tore my bicep in Mexico, there’s not been many times where I’ve missed shows, from being hurt. This was the first time where I sort of had to call up a couple of, you know, promoters, one in Chicago, one in Puerto Rico and say, ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t make it because I was just…’ I’d worked the two weeks before, but one week, I was in England, and then North Carolina… Every time after the match the next day, I was just struggling to get out of bed, struggling to get dressed… Turns out that it was actually just a huge amount of inflammation that (was) just getting aggravated, you know, from this injury. So, just took some time off, feels good.
Per PWInsider, Aldis and Michael Hayes produced the in-ring segment with Judgment Day (Finn Bálor, Damian Priest, Rhea Ripley & Dominik Mysterio) on the 9/4 Raw, during which J.D. McDonagh gave Priest a custom Money in the Bank briefcase.
