Add as a preferred source on Google Nick Aldis had about a month’s notice to get ring-ready for the first WWE match of his career.
The SmackDown GM said he got the word while WWE was in Saudi Arabia for Night of Champions on 6/27, the same trip that produced the first on-screen confrontation between him and Gunther on the post-show in Riyadh. WWE didn’t sign the match until 7/19, when Triple H made it official at the SummerSlam Kickoff during Fanatics Fest in New York.
Speaking to WWE Now, Aldis said the first thing he brought up with WWE creative’s Ed Koskey wasn’t the spot on the card. It was his conditioning.
“That’s the first thing I told Ed Koskey when I first found out about this. Look, to find out quite out of the blue you can have a match with one of the top guys in the world, top guy in the company, at SummerSlam, in a stadium, amazing.
“But when he told me, that was in Saudi Arabia, and I went ‘When is SummerSlam?’ August 1. And today’s June 30 or June 29. I was like ‘That’s a month.’
“I go ‘Ed, there’s a big difference between physique shape and ring shape and I am not in ring shape.’ You have an awful lot of faith in me to — because you know, without having too many conversations I had a pretty good idea of what it was probably gonna be.”
Aldis hadn’t worked a match since 7/16/2023, when he lost to Eric Young on Impact, leaving him 1,112 days out of the ring heading into Minneapolis.
The short runway didn’t show. Aldis was over big with the U.S. Bank Stadium crowd, got his nearfalls and even had Gunther in the King’s Lynn Cloverleaf, but The Ring General eventually put him away with the sleeper.