AEW star Nick Aldis recently appeared on the Battleground podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Aldis was asked how different he is as a performer now compared to his first run in Impact:
“Well, I think the easiest way to sort of sum it up is that I came back to Impact Wrestling as Nick Aldis. I think there’s a collective understanding between Impact and me and for the audience that who I was that first go-around was sort of a rough draft. I was a kid. I was young. Like I said in my interview on Impact last week, I had a lot of potential, not a great gimmick out of the gate, and it was just a lot of faking it until I made it. I think in a lot of ways it was necessary for me to go away because I was sort of thrown in at the deep end from a young age, so I sort of missed out on some of the opportunities that you have spending a lot of time on the independents to try things and find yourself and have a bit more control of how you present yourself and who you are and controlling your destiny a little bit. To build off of the history I have there, but then combine it with the legacy I’ve carved out for myself as the traveling World Champion and as someone who can, I don’t think I’m overstating this, but can say I had a pretty big hand in reigniting an entire brand. There’s a different level of credibility now and I think that’s exciting to me.”
Why he returned to Impact:
“They showed me the respect of basically saying we want Nick Aldis. Come in here. We want you to build off the work you’ve done and combine that with the history you have here. The roster at Impact is world class. There’s so much discussion all the time about who’s coming and going at WWE, who’s coming and going at AEW, and that’s justifiable, but in the meantime, if you look at Impact’s roster, man, that’s a murderer’s row. I’m looking and going, finally I got some real competition. I’m looking around going, yep, I want to mix it up with him. Yeah, I want to get in there with him. Me and him will be money. It’s like, take your pick, but make no mistake, if I’m coming in, I don’t want to waste any time. I want to go after the strap.”
You can check out the complete appearance below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
