Eric Bischoff covered TNA Against All Odds 2012 on a recent installment of his 83 Weeks podcast on AdFreeShows.com.
During it, he was asked what his initial thoughts were of Nick Aldis during this time in TNA Wrestling:
“Nick and I have become friends. I have a ton of respect for Nick, and I think he’s a really underrated talent,” Bischoff said.
“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.”
Bischoff then talked about how TNA President Dixie Carter was a big fan of Magnus.
“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,” he continued.
“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,” Eric continued.
“I remember working pretty closely with Nick during his storyline 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.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription