Nick Aldis didn’t exactly have a training camp before his SummerSlam match against Gunther.
Aldis returned to the ring against Gunther at SummerSlam on Saturday, August 1, his first match since 2023. Appearing afterward on WWE Now with Sam Roberts, he revealed just how little advance notice he actually had: he first learned about the match from Ed Koskey while in Saudi Arabia, at a point when SummerSlam was still roughly a month away.
When Ed [Koskey] told me, that was in Saudi Arabia, I went, ‘When is SummerSlam?’ He said, ‘August 1st.’
‘Right. Today is June 30th? Or the 29th? That’s a month, Ed. There is a big difference between physique shape and ring shape. I am not in ring shape. You have an awful lot of faith in me.’
That timeline gave Aldis real pause. As he put it, there’s a meaningful difference between being in physique shape and being in ring shape — and he candidly admitted he wasn’t in ring shape heading into an assignment against one of the best in-ring performers in the company.
What surprised him most, he said, wasn’t the assignment itself, but how casually Triple H and WWE’s upper management treated it. According to Aldis, nobody really checked in to ask if he felt ready — he was simply told he’d be wrestling Gunther, three years of ring rust included. He even joked afterward that he felt gassed just walking out to his entrance.
Because obviously, without having too many conversations, I had a pretty good idea of what it was gonna be. And I was, ‘Yeah, that’s great and everything.’ But I talked about this on Chris Van Vliet this week, where I said I think the most sort of surprising part of all this was how casual 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?’ They were just kind of, ‘Ah, have a match with Gunther.’ I haven’t worked in three years. And of all people, with Gunther. Right?
The match itself went 11 minutes and 40 seconds, with Gunther picking up the win. Aldis was joined in the ring afterward by his family, including wife Mickie James. In additional news from the night, Triple H confirmed during the post-show press conference that Aldis has been reinstated as SmackDown General Manager.
