Nick Aldis recently explained why he decided to leave the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), and said that a story that he heard from Paul “Triple H” Levesque inspired him to do it.
Last week was quite the one for both the NWA and two-time NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis, with the latter accidentally posting on Instagram that he gave his 60-day notice to Billy Corgan’s promotion, which effectively makes him a free on January 1, 2023. Nick Aldis’ post was meant to be for just subscribers. In response, NWA suspended Aldis, as well as removing him from NWA Hard Times 3.
Triple H Inspired Nick Aldis To Leave NWA
Recently, Nick Aldis would partake in an interview to dish out his side of the story, with Billy Corgan doing the same on the press circuit. Nick Aldis appeared on the “Notsam Wrestling” podcast for a lengthy conversation with Sam Roberts, with Aldis agreeing with Roberts’ opinion of him being the brand of NWA. Afterwards, Nick Aldis then brought up a recent interview that Triple H did speaking about changes to NXT, which inspired him to eventually leave the National Wrestling Alliance.
“It probably wouldn’t be alarming for people who had been following the product for the last year. Like I’m sure that to them, I’m sure for them it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise, you know. But I understand what you’re saying and appreciate it. I tried to avoid saying anything like this, because there’s no way to say it without sounding you know, like you’re sort of self promoting and being egotistical.
But yes, I was the sort of perennial face of the brand. You know, I heard an interview that Triple H did with Ariel Helwani. Ariel asked him about NXT, you know, and how it had changed. And I, you know, and it, to me, his answers sort of mirrors how I feel in a lot of ways about the NWA. Like it moved away from what I had, you know, wanted it to be.
And I, again, much in the same way, I suppose not now, obviously, because he’s running the place now. But like, at that time, he kind of had this, it seemed to me he had this mentality of, It’s not my [fault] there’s nothing I can do about it, you know. And that’s sort of where I got to it, you know, with with the NWA is when this not, it’s become now is not what I envisioned it to be in certainly isn’t what I was laying the groundwork for it to be didn’t have the didn’t have the core values that I had tried to sort of maintain.
And again, this was not a knock. It was just me going this isn’t for me anymore. I wanted to do an alternative wrestling brand that represented all those things about the NWA, that people missed in the current product, whether it be from sort of overproduction or from you know, a different mentality or different style, like, let’s give them all those things, because I felt like there was a good portion of the audience, particularly in the south, who missed rasslin. That was it.
Like I wanted it to be burgers and fries, red, white and blue rasslin, because I love that stuff. But it was It wasn’t because it was like, I hate high spots, you know, and I hate these other type of [wrestling], I hate sports entertainment. It wasn’t that, it was more like looking at it from a business point of view of hey, there’s a gap in the market, I think for this type of product. And when I had the influence to sort of make that happen, like you said, we steered everything toward that vision, and it worked.”
If you use any quotes from this transcription, please credit Notsam Wrestling and link back to this article with a H/T to Inside The Ropes.