NWA Worlds Champion Nick Aldis recently spoke with Kevin Kellam about his opponent Marty Scurll at the upcoming NWA Crockett Cup event this Saturday. Aldis also talks about how the NWA Championship has garnered a rejuvenated interest into professional wrestling thanks greatly in part to staying true to the promotion and title’s historical roots. He also talks about his chemistry with Cody Rhodes and the value that the streaming video medium has been to the classic letters of the NWA.
Nick Aldis talks about his relationship with Marty Scurll and how their NWA Worlds Championship match at The Crockett Cup is based on merit as well as relationship:
It’s a couple of things really. One being obviously that we are genuinely friends, we are best mates, we have known each other since he was 15 and I was 17—but the other part of it is that we’re here based on merit, you know? It’s not me going to the NWA office and being like, ‘I really want to main event this show with Marty Scurll.’ And it’s not Marty Scurll lobbying Ring of Honor and saying, ‘I really want to wrestle Nick. Let’s do that.’ We’re the natural match-up. He’s the natural best option for a title match.
It’s the best option for business between the two organizations and we’ve proven that with the box office and the amount of coverage that we’ve got leading up to this PPV. That’s the part that’s really gratifying is that we’re here based on merit, and we’ve done it by creating our own characters now and marching to the beat of our own drum. That’s something that Marty really blazed a trail with, and that’s something that I was inspired by him to do.
On how beneficial it’s been for the NWA product being on several streaming platforms throughout the past several years:
It’s everything. You’re 100% right on that and it’s a very good observation. A lot has been said about where the NWA was in the late ’90s, the early 2000s and things of that nature and obviously not a particularly positive point of discussion, but in those people’s defense, the technology wasn’t sophisticated enough yet. And to your point, Billy was very smart to get access to the Houston wrestling footage which gave us access to a timeline of champions—WWE owns so much of all the content out there and kudos to them for having the wherewithal to do that from the very beginning. We have them to thank as well in many ways because the WWE Network is a fabulous resource for any wrestling fan or in my case, like a student of the game. One of the reasons I say wholeheartedly I think WWE is as responsible as anyone else for the renewed interest in the NWA because of the fantastic pieces they’ve put out on the rivalry between Flair and Dusty and Flair and Steamboat, and the way they romanticize the NWA in its heyday when they’ve talked about various people from that era, so we have them to thank in a lot of ways.
You see a lot more NWA from the ’80s in the DNA of the sort of modern product than you do of anything else. That fast-paced, gritty, athletic wrestling style.
On being asked so many times why he’s not in the WWE:
They’ve already got a lot of guys. I think Marty would probably fall into the same bracket too. There’s only room for so many people at the top of one thing and if you want to be at the top, like, my presentation and my interviews, my work in the ring, it lends itself to a certain spot, you know? I’m not saying I want to be a big fish in a small pond, but I’m saying I’m valuable as a sort of person to be at forefront of a movement of a brand, an organization.
You can listen to the full interview below:
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone):
