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Folks, the professional wrestling world has its first right proper free agent of 2023 officially on the board, as Nick Aldis, the former NWA Champion, has officially put in his notice to the National Wrestling Alliance that he will test the opening market and potentially sign with WWE, AEW, or even Impact, where his wife, Mickie James, currently calls home, h/t to Fightful.
“I gave my notice to the NWA. I'll be a free agent on January 1st,” Aldis said on his Instagram. “Once I figure out how to do videos for subscribers only I'll be back with more insight on the decision, conversations with Mickie and my agent and more… Love you all.”
This, understandably, didn't sit too well with NWA, who released a statement of their own and announced that Aldis was suspended “until further notice,” according to PW Insider.
Pursuant to the recent comments made by Nick Aldis, the National Wrestling Alliance, has suspended Aldis from the main roster and effective immediately Aldis will not appear for the
Hard Times 3 PPV and Revolution Rumble television tapings in New Orleans, LA on Nov. 12, 2022 and Nov. 13, 2022.As such, the National Wrestling Alliance reserves its right to comment on this matter at a future date.
Will fans ever see Aldis in NWA again? No, probably not, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing for wrestling fans, as bringing the “National Treasure” to another other professional promotion has the potential to be big-time either way.
Nick Aldis had interest from WWE, AEW In the Past
Recall, if you will, that Aldis has mentioned interest he's received from both AEW and WWE in the past, as he detailed on Busted Open Radio back in July, via a transcription from Fightful.
“My first year with the NWA, an entire year, we’re talking the Ten Pounds of Gold Series, traveling all over the world. Tommy is well aware of this because he is a promoter who booked me,” Aldis said. “The entire time I was doing that, do you know how much money I received from the NWA? Try 0. Try zip. My earnings as a professional wrestler came from the promoters who wanted to book me because the fans wanted to see me defend that belt. I was working without a contract. All In, one of the most significant pro wrestling shows of the last decade, I didn’t sell those tickets, but by the time we got there, I was in the match people wanted to see. I had no contract. If I had been a ‘politicker,’ do you not think I would have said, ‘Hey brother, there are 11,000 people here and I’m in the match you guys came to see. I think I’m going to need a little cheddar or might need something here because this doesn’t work for me, brother.’ If I was a politicker, do you not think I might have been able to call Stamford and say, ‘I don’t have a contract.’ Everything is riding on this and here I am, you need me to facilitate this moment you want. I didn’t do that because I love and respect this business and I’m a man of my word.”
“In 2019, I was given the opportunity to jump on the train with Tony Khan. Tony was very gracious to me. He gave me a phone call and we had a good conversation. Out of loyalty and gratitude, I decided to stay. I guess the train doesn’t stop twice. Now that I look back, who knows. That gets thrown back in my face. For what?”
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Now granted, AEW and WWE are both very different companies now than they were a few months, let alone years back. Still, there should always be a home for a 36-year-old multi-time champion with a throwback style and good mic skills – just ask LA Knight.
Nick Aldis claps back on Billy Corgan's shortsighted EmPowerrr statements.
Speaking with Steve Fall NBC Sports Boston on his Ten Count show, NWA owner and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan gave a very interesting statement on the future of NWA EmPowerrr, the company's female-only Pay-Per-View that has yet to return for a second showing.
“I'm really intrigued by the interest in EmPowerrr,” Corgan said. “We continue to want to do it and we continue to have discussions with other companies about working together to create a fresh EmPowerrr event. Last time I talked about it, I created some headlines because people took umbrage with the fact…in fact, I had Maria Kanellis, I've known Maria for many years and I love Maria, but even Maria called me out saying something about ‘we have women.' Every company has the right to decide their level of standards. When you create a world-class event like EmPowerrr, and it was a world-class event, you set a very high standard of what you should expect. Of course there are plenty of great professional women's wrestlers in the world. Can they wrestle the NWA style? Can they carry a three-hour pay-per-view? Can they move the case of women's wrestling, not just in wrestling but in terms of international media, forward? These are my concerns. Everybody has their own version of it. That's my version of it and that's why I'm still on that. Until we can provide a world-class event with some of the best professional wrestlers in the world, in this case, females on the card, we won't do it. All this weird howling that goes on about it is very strange to me because you're taking a positive and making a negative out of a positive, that's weird to me. Why would you take a positive…by the way, we put EmPowerrr as the first night of a two-night pay-per-view, on an anniversary show, and it drew, people cared. What if it didn't and people didn't care and it did horrible numbers? What if the matches were bad? You create a high watermark, you do something beautiful, make a big statement, and somehow it turns into a weird negative where somehow I'm running from it. I'm not running from anything. I'm talking about my reasons for why we haven't done it yet. I continue to explore those opportunities. That's it. It's not more complicated than that.”
Yikes, now that is going to garner some hot takes, including one from none other than Aldis, Corgan's former champion, who clapped back in a major way on Twitter.
“If some of you are wondering whether stuff like this factored into my decision to give my notice you'd be correct,” Aldis tweeted. Welp, is there any better coda to the story than that?
