Nick Aldis Recalls Pitching Third Match With Cody Rhodes, Why The Match Didn’t Happen

Nick Aldis had a two-match rivalry with Cody Rhodes over the NWA World Title in 2018, and he recently revealed that a third match was pitched. Aldis, who was the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion at the time, feuded with Rhodes which led to a match at All In where Rhodes won the title, and Aldis won it back at that year’s NWA 70th Anniversary Show. Aldis spoke with the Universal Wrestling Podcast and noted that they talked about a rubber match but it didn’t happen. You can check out the highlights below:

On planning a follow-up match with Rhodes: “Yes. We actually wanted to do a trilogy, but unfortunately that never happened. Ring of Honor put the kibosh on that. I guess I could talk about it now, enough time has passed. There were some misconceptions about that, and I think that even, you know, I think Cody even at the time had a little bit of hurt feelings about it because he wasn’t quite sure who to trust. And look, there’s a whole lot to unpack, and I don’t want to get into it. But there was a period, you know, there were some — there was a lot of misconceptions around that period.

On pitching the third match after the success of first one: “But the way I understood it was that, so obviously we knew that we were going to do two matches. We were going to have the return match in Nashville. But I got with Cody and once we we knew how big Chicago was going to be a few weeks before like a few weeks before. Chicago, obviously it was already, they sold out the show, sold out in 30 minutes. But I didn’t have anything to do with that. But as we got closer and closer, I think we — when you’ve been in the business long enough, you kind of know when something you’re doing is is hitting. And you know, I’m not in WWE so I haven’t had that feeling a lot, right? [chuckles]. So when you know that, you’re the talk of the town, right? You’re you’re the talk of the business. Obviously, naturally, you start thinking about, ‘Can we get more out of this? How can we maximize this?’

“And I think that once we had the match, and then we knew that the Nashville match was coming up, I had some conversation with Cody about like. ‘Do you think we could, I think we could do a trilogy.’ And I basically, from what I recall, I just remember sort of throwing it out there like, ‘What if it’s a Broadway in Nashville, and then we do a number three in London. And it was kind of like, you know, we were excited about that.”

On why the match didn’t happen: “In the meantime, he — you know, AEW started, right? And you know, I certainly didn’t know anything about that until after that. But you know, I guess at some point in there he had to sort of let Ring of Honor know like, ‘I’m out of here at the end of the year, thanks for everything.’ And so then, you know, Ring of Honor basically said, ‘Alright, that’s it, you know?’ At least, this is, this is the way, the version of it that I know. I was basically then sort of told like, ‘Hey, you know, conclude your business with Cody at the next, at the Nashville show and that’s that.'”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Universal Wrestling Podcast with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.