Chelsea Green’s emotional promo with Nick Aldis on SmackDown wasn’t something she simply came up with on the spot. Green has now revealed how much work went into the segment, including writing and memorizing it herself and repeatedly trimming it down because there was simply too much real material to use.
While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Green looked back at the August 14 SmackDown segment where Aldis told her she couldn’t compete with a broken orbital bone and asked her to give up the WWE Women’s Championship. Green eventually convinced him to give her 30 days to get medically cleared, but the injury itself couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Green had only recently won the championship after spending 13 years trying to reach that point. Once she learned how serious the injury was, Green immediately started thinking about everything that had led her there.
“Like my whole, the whole not just like week, like the week flashed before my eyes, but like 13 years flashed before my eyes, Rhea Ripley flashed before my eyes, like all of it. I was like, come on.”
What made the timing even more ridiculous was that Green had recently talked about her history of bad luck in wrestling. She had literally just explained that whenever something great happens in her career, something awful seems to follow.
“I had just said to Sam Roberts, I think it was to Sam Roberts. I said it like, every time something good in wrestling happens to me, it’s followed by something devastating. Something nasty happens to me right after. Like, I have such bad luck.”
That gave Green plenty to work with when it came time for the Aldis segment. Van Vliet called it the best promo of her career because everything Green said about the sacrifices, embarrassing moments and setbacks she endured felt real. Green says that’s because it was.
“I mean, at the end of the day, it was real. Like, we have so much to work with. We have 13 years to work with and within the company we have so much to work with.”
The bigger problem was deciding what to leave out. Green has been through enough since first joining WWE in 2018—and especially since returning in 2023—that she and Aldis actually had to keep cutting material from the promo.
“I have done so much since 2018, but so much since 2023, like dumpster matches and all, every like, shtick I’ve done. So there was so much to work with. In fact, we just kept having to trim the promo. We had a lot.”
Aldis was heavily involved in that process too. Green says the two have developed strong chemistry when working on backstage segments and pre-tapes, with Aldis regularly suggesting different ways she can phrase or deliver something.
“Me and Nick. We have great chemistry. Um, when it comes to pre-tapes, backstages, promos. Like we love bouncing ideas off of each other. He’s always giving me incredible feedback or like, you know, maybe like, maybe say it like this, maybe change it.”
Green believes part of why they work so well together is that neither of them wants those segments to feel like stereotypical wrestling promos. They approach them more like acting scenes, which is important to Green because there’s one particular wrestling habit she absolutely cannot stand.
“I think he thinks of it the same way I do. Whereas like, we’re not wrestling, we’re acting. So like how do we make this super real instead of such a wrestling promo? If I have to hear another wrestling promo where the cadence is so wrestling, it gives me the ick. I cringe all the time.”
Green says wrestlers are getting better at avoiding that by taking acting classes and finding something real to pull from when they need to deliver an emotional performance. That’s exactly what she did with Aldis. The history and emotion were real, but the finished promo was still something Green carefully put together before performing it on SmackDown.
“Yes, the words were real, the promo was real, but, but at the end of the day, I still wrote it, memorized it, and then acted it out for you.”
Green wasn’t just improvising while trying to save her championship on television. She took 13 years of real frustration, setbacks and ridiculous WWE moments, worked through the material with Aldis, cut out what they didn’t need and then performed what was left. Considering Green says traditional wrestling promos give her “the ick,” this one certainly ended up feeling anything but traditional.
What did you think of Chelsea Green’s promo with Nick Aldis on SmackDown? Let us know in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
