In recent weeks the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) has reformed a working partnership with Ring of Honor, with stars like Marty Scurll, Flip Gordon and NWA World Heavyweight Champions Nick Aldis popping up on shows for both promotions. But there’s one other company that fans have apparently been hounding the NWA to work with — All Elite Wrestling. According to Aldis, he gets pitched the idea of working with AEW “almost daily,” given the history he has with executive vice president Cody Rhodes. In a new interview with Sports Illustrated, the world champion kept the door for a partnership wide open.
“The NWA is open to working with anyone. There are a number of wrestlers outside the WWE that are viewed as elite-level guys, so it’s only a matter of time before the audience starts demanding the main-event matches they want to see,” Aldis said. “We want to give the fans the matches they want to see, these super fights.
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“If AEW wants to be involved in big, marquee matches, then they have two choices: go out and write some more big checks to some more guys, or they’re going to have to come to the table and work out some super fights with the NWA,” he added.
For those who don’t remember, Aldis took part in Rhodes and The Young Bucks’ self-promoted All In event back in 2018, which wound be being the precursor for the launch of AEW as a promotion. Aldis dropped the NWA title to Rhodes at that show, then won it back months later at the NWA’s 70th Anniversary special.
Days before AEW launched AEW Dynamite on TNT, the NWA released the first episode of its weekly taped series NWA Power. New episodes of the studio wrestling show drop on Tuesdays on YouTube.
NWA’s next pay-per-view, Hard Times, takes place on Friday at the GPB Studios in Atlanta. Along with an interpromotional match between Aldis and Gordon, the show will feature an eight-man single-elimination tournament to crown a new NWA World Television Champion.
AEW recently announced that it signed a new contract extension with WarnerMedia to keep Dynamite on TNT through 2023.
“When we launched AEW one year ago, we wanted to start a revolution that would disrupt the wrestling business, but everyone said that it would take a strong weekly television partner to make AEW real in the eyes of everyone — above all, the fans,” AEW president Tony Khan said in the release. “What virtually no one realized at the time was Kevin Reilly and TNT were committed to this very same movement from Day One, and their belief in us made it possible for AEW to think and act big from the start. Here we are, only three months into Wednesday Night Dynamite, and now we’ve been extended through 2023! We’re now making the ultimate statement that the team of AEW and TNT is here to stay and to bring fans more of the great wrestling that the fans demand and deserve.”
