Nick Aldis thinks modern wrestling fans have a problem—and it has nothing to do with what’s happening in the ring.
According to the SmackDown General Manager, too many people spend their time trying to figure out who wrote a segment, who booked a finish or whose idea a storyline was instead of simply deciding whether they enjoyed what they watched.
While speaking with Soundsphere, Aldis pointed to Vince Russo as the perfect example of how that mindset has changed wrestling discussion. Despite Russo remaining one of the most polarizing names in the business, Aldis said he still enjoys talking to him and doesn’t believe fans should judge someone’s ideas based solely on their reputation.
“I like Vince Russo. I still keep in touch with Vince. I enjoy talking to him. He’s an entertaining guy and I get on very well with him. I don’t have to necessarily agree with everything he says and does, but I don’t agree with everything anyone says or does. I don’t agree with everything my wife says. I look back at some of my own s*** and don’t agree with what I said.”
From there, Aldis argued that Russo both created—and eventually became a victim of—the culture surrounding wrestling’s creative process. During the Attitude Era, fans weren’t spending every Monday night wondering who was sitting in the writer’s room. They were simply reacting to what they saw on television.
“Vince has sort of been a victim of that culture, but he also helped create that culture because when all that stuff was happening… nobody at the time knew about it. They didn’t sit there and know there was this guy Vince Russo writing this stuff. They were just like, ‘Wow, this is nuts.'”
That led Aldis to another point he’s never fully understood. He questioned why Russo is often blamed for controversial storylines while Paul Heyman is celebrated as one of wrestling’s greatest creative minds, arguing that fans are judging the people behind the ideas instead of the ideas themselves.
“How does he get this negative connotation but Paul Heyman with ECW is lauded as this genius? I like Paul… but it’s interesting to me. I don’t think that comes down to anything more than personalities because people are judging the work based on the personality of the person who wrote it.”
For Aldis, that’s where modern wrestling discourse has gone off the rails. Instead of watching a show and deciding whether it worked, fans immediately want to know who pitched it, who approved it and who deserves the credit—or the blame.
“There’s this overwhelming need to know whose idea everything was. Who came up with it? Why? Who wrote it? Who booked it? I didn’t… you liked it better when you didn’t know.”
He believes that once fans attach a storyline to a particular creative figure, objectivity disappears. He then gave a simple philosophy: good ideas should stand on their own, regardless of who came up with them.
“Once you associate what you’re watching with a personality that you now have to decide whether you like or dislike or agree or disagree with, it’s completely taken away your objectivity. Now you’re looking at it subjectively. A good idea is a good idea. If you’re going to dismiss stuff because you don’t like where it came from… no one successful should think like that.”
Whether fans agree with Aldis or not, his comments tap into one of the biggest debates in wrestling today: has the conversation shifted too far away from the product itself and toward the people creating it?
Do you agree with Nick Aldis that wrestling fans have become too focused on bookers and writers? Let us know in the comments below.
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