Nick Aldis talks turning down AEW, building the NWA brand, and more!

DDT: The NWA and Ring of Honor have had a great working relationship for some time now. Do you think more companies can benefit from working together?

Aldis: I don’t think it’s a case of benefiting anymore as it is a case of surviving. That’s just my take. Some companies have to pull their head out of their (expletive). That’s the reality.

Instead of worrying about signing guys to exclusive deals and trying to screw over other companies who are in the same boat as they are, what they should be doing is figuring out… What we do is eliminate the typical rules and parameters of, “This guy is under contract and that’s the only promotion he can wrestle in.”

We recently sat down and said, with me for example, “Anywhere in the world, who are your top five title matches that you can do right now?” I said, “I said this guy from WWE, this guy from WWE, this guy from New Japan, this guy from wherever,” and obviously me and Cody III, the rubber match. Just to remind ourselves that anything is possible. So many companies exhaust what they have because they’re not thinking outside the box.

We proved how easy it was to happen. Ring of Honor produced All In. That was a Ring of Honor show for all intents and purposes. It was just co-produced by Cody and the [Young] Bucks. In order for Cody to have what he wanted, which was the match with me, Ring of Honor had to work with us and out of that, we ended up with a more long-term relationship.

They also brought in other people that they used who weren’t under contract to Ring of Honor and frankly, we don’t see as ambitious as other people do as we could end up doing that with other companies, or with the company. Ultimately, who has their hands on more history in this business than WWE. When you’re scrambling to make moments that mean something, a real easy thing to do is build off history, and nothing has more history right now than the Ten Pounds of Gold.