Add as a preferred source on Google Nick Aldis, who tapped out to Gunther on night one of SummerSlam, said the most surprising part of the whole thing was how casual Triple H and WWE’s upper management were about putting him back in the ring.
Speaking with Sam Roberts on WWE Now, Aldis said he kept waiting for someone to sit him down and ask whether he was ready to work with Gunther after three years off, and it never came.
“I think the most surprising thing about all this was how causal Triple H and upper management seemed to be about this.
No one’s kind of gone ‘Are you ready? Can you do this? Are you good with this?’ Everyone’s like ‘You’re gonna have a match with GUNTHER.’ ‘I haven’t worked in three years, what are you doing?'”
Aldis had his own doubts going in. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet ahead of the show, he said there’s a big difference between being in physique shape and being in ring shape, and that he wasn’t in ring shape.
He hadn’t worked a televised match since 7/16/2023, when Eric Young beat him at an Impact Wrestling taping, a gap of 1,112 days.
Aldis had stepped down as SmackDown General Manager to take the Gunther match and handed Triple H his resignation letter afterward, but Triple H tore it up and reinstated him during the post-show.