Nick Aldis Admits He Didn't Know What He Was Doing During His First Impact Run

Nearly a decade removed from his first run with Impact Wrestling, Nick Aldis admits he didn't completely have a grasp on what his character was doing. Opening up about his career on the "Battleground Podcast," the former TNA World Heavyweight Champion said he "didn't really know what I was doing in a lot of ways," and that there was "a collective understanding" between Impact, himself, and the audience that his character during his early days with the promotion was a "rough draft" of who he's become now.

"I was a kid. I was young," Aldis, now 36, said. "I had a lot of potential, but not a great gimmick out of the gate, and it was just a lot of sort of faking it 'til I made it." Aldis wrestled for TNA/Impact from 2008 until 2015, when he jumped ship alongside Jeff Jarrett to the short-lived Global Force Wrestling. Aldis briefly returned to Impact in 2017, but soon left again to join the revamped NWA under Billy Corgan. There, Aldis became a two-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion before he quit the company late last year due to issues with Corgan's creative direction.

Now, Aldis is back in TNA, where he first made a name for himself as part of "The British Invasion" and later the "Main Event Mafia." "I think in a lot of ways it was necessary for me to go away, because I was sort of thrown into the deep end from a young age," Aldis said. "So, I sort of missed out on some of the opportunities that you have spending a lot of time on the independents to sort of try things and find yourself and have a bit more control of how you present yourself."