Nick Aldis has come a long way since his days as Magnus in IMPACT Wrestling.
During a recent edition of his "83 Weeks" podcast, former WCW and IMPACT Wrestling executive Eric Bischoff reflected on working with a young Nick Aldis during his run as Magnus in what was then referred to as TNA Wrestling.
Bischoff explained how Aldis was "cocky as f*ck" at the time, but how the president of the company back then, Dixie Carter, was a big fan of his and wanted to use him to help grow the product in the U.K. market.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the show where he shares some stories about his own dealings with Nick "Magnus" Aldis.
On being asked what his initial thoughts were of Nick Aldis during this time in IMPACT (TNA) Wrestling as Magnus: “Nick and I have become friends. I have a ton of respect for Nick, and I think he’s a really underrated talent. He has an amazing look. He can work. He can talk. He can represent your company in the best way possible in any given situation. I can’t say enough good things about Nick, but when Nick first came into TNA, he thought very highly of himself and he didn’t develop the relationships early on that I think would have been helpful to kind of just become a part of the team.”
On how TNA President Dixie Carter was a big fan of Aldis: “Dixie treated him like he was very, very special. She was very high on him because she was so focused on the U.K. She really felt the U.K. was pivotal in terms of TNA being profitable, and I understood it and agreed with it, but when she got a look at Magnus and was able to bring him in, she treated him really, really well. Nick was very young. He was 22 years old at the time. He had become kind of a high profile celebrity in the U.K. He’s 22 years old. He’s cocky as f*ck, and he didn’t try to hide it at all. He was very aloof at best. That’s the nicest way to say it, at best, and it took Nick a while to kind of get his sea legs so to speak and become a part of the team. Now as I worked with Nick, my initial reaction was f*ck, he thinks his sh*t doesn’t stink, but as time went on that changed a lot.
“I remember working pretty closely with Nick during his story line with Sting, and produced and directed a lot of their interactions, and that kind of changed everything between Nick and I, but initially I didn’t think too much of him. I didn’t dislike him. His work was okay. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t something that made me go, ‘Holy crap, we gotta throw the sheets out the window, get rid of the format, rewrite the show, and build it around that guy because he’s got a great look and he can work his a** off. It was somewhere in the middle, good solid foundation, workable, amazing look, promos were just okay at that time, but eventually that all changed.”
Check out the complete episode of the 83 Weeks podcast featuring Eric Bischoff by visiting . H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
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