A chat with Aldis about several career highlights.
Since the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship match between Cody Rhodes and Nick Aldis took place at ALL IN 2018, both talents have gone on record sharing their thoughts about everything involving the match on multiple occasions.
The bout was brought up again during Inside The Ropes’ interview with Aldis. He was asked how he felt about the career trajectories that himself and Cody went on post-ALL IN with Rhodes being a part of launching AEW and Aldis being the face of NWA.
He shared that he did feel a bit betrayed that he was not informed about The Elite’s intentions to launch what would become AEW. Aldis feels he could’ve been told what was in the works. He added that he does not resent Rhodes for his success post-ALL IN and is grateful to him. Aldis feels if the NWA Worlds Title match was not on that show, it would have moved tickets regardless but it would have been perceived differently.
I think in this business, if you start playing the comparison game, you can really go down a rabbit hole of bitterness and resentment very quickly. I felt a little bit betrayed when I found out they were all familiar, they were all aware of Tony Khan and they’d been sort of plotting this thing, and so then as we progressed a couple months forward, it’s sort like, oh, that’s already happening, that’s sort of a done deal, and so in that respect, yeah, I guess I felt… I felt that I could’ve been informed of that sooner. But, I just looked at it from the perspective of like, that piece of business, meaning Cody (Rhodes) and I at ALL IN, that did nothing but good things for all of everyone involved. It wasn’t like people looked at him and went, oh, he’s finished. We tore the house down and we had the match that everybody remembers. We had the real main event of that show and that built my credibility and off the back of that, we were able to launch an entire show that, at that time, had a strong, sustainable audience… I landed a six-figure contract off the back of that also. Cody obviously had a pipeline to a billionaire, you know, so, it’s different (Aldis laughed). I only had a millionaire, he had a billionaire but whatever… It’s all just a part of the tapestry of your career, right? I certainly didn’t resent Cody. If anything, I was grateful to Cody, because the success of that show… they’d sold those tickets no matter what, right? I didn’t draw the house. But I felt like I made the show what it was. If you take Cody and I’s match out of ALL IN, I think people remember it as a sort of really amazing achievement as a sort of, wow. Almost like a giant crowdfunding exhibit. Like, just, wow, I can’t believe all these guys got together and they managed to sell 11,000 seats to an arena. That’s really cool. But I felt like what Cody and I’s match did was kind of show that, no, it can be done outside of WWE. A moment, you know? Storytelling, emotion, the big fight feel, the delivery of the big match and the fairytale ending can happen somewhere else, with the right guys and look, Cody was the right guy but I was the right guy too. I felt like it underlined me as like, this guy can do it too.
Looking back at Aldis’ arrival to WWE television as the SmackDown General Manager, he heaped praise onto Dominik Mysterio and stated that Mysterio was the key component to him establishing his character in that debut segment.
Full credit to Dom Mysterio because… just to put this into perspective, I’m making my television debut for WWE with one of my idols, Triple H, and for me, the thing I saw as the most valuable thing for me to establish my character was Dominik Mysterio. Obviously, yes, you’re getting the endorsement from Triple H and that’s gonna help me in terms of credibility. But in terms of something that could give me a chance to get me a reaction, Dominik Mysterio was the necessary party in the equation and that’s a real testament to Dom… If he’s not the most improved, fastest-rising star, I don’t know who is because that kid, he’s special. But, thankfully his heat is so strong that I had the opportunity to deliver that line and I had good timing on it and without patting myself on the back too hard, I was not concerned about my delivery and for me, I felt like, okay, that was me kicking the door in, right? With the WWE universe… My way of going, this is the SmackDown General Manager character.
Aldis and Rhodes were featured on-screen together on the 3/22 SmackDown prior to Rhodes’ face-to-face with Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns.
Rhodes was in the closing segment of the latest episode of Raw during which The Rock made him bleed.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Inside The Ropes with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
