This Day in Wrestling History loves looking back at various points and seeing glimpses of glory, and this one came to us when Cody defeated Nick Aldis to win his first world championship on September 1, 2018.
By now, most professional wrestling fans know who Cody is since AEW’s exploded on our screens over the last two years.
Yes, he’s Dusty Rhodes’ son and Dustin Rhodes’ brother, but he also paid his dues in various promotions from the NWA to the WWE and many stops besides them.
ALL IN@nwa Worlds Heavyweight Champion pic.twitter.com/Kh2tWuhSeU
— Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) September 3, 2018
First time’s the charm
In 2018, the NWA was continuing to grow since splitting from Impact Wrestling (TNA) and this was the first match ever between Cody and Aldis and they responded to that and the pressure with a tremendous match.
Nick Aldis talked about it with Sportskeeda in 2018, and we want to thank @awrestinghistorian for the excerpt.
“I had a vision in my head of how the night will go, I think Cody did as well, I think we all did, when you have something like that, you all create an idea in your mind, and obviously with the sell out happening so fast, thirty minutes, that element of it was nothing to worry about! So you go ‘Okay, the buildings going to be full’. But then it came to how to get a reaction, we’ve done all this work, we’ve done all this build, we’ve made more effort than anyone else to make this title mean something, to make this match mean something, is it going to pay off?
“But I think Cody felt the same and we had, obviously, a lot of chemistry. The thing that people need to remember about that match was that’s the first time we’ve ever wrestled, and anyone who wrestles will tell you the first time you wrestle someone there’s always a few kinks, there’s a feeling out process.
“And I believed it would, but there’s no way of being able to predict exactly just how well it’s going to work. reading the feedback and the comments during the build I got this impression that it’s going to be special, it’s going to be a big moment and then when we got to Chicago and we’re around people.
“I did my appearance at Starrcast, I could feel this different energy for our match and I started feeling it, in my mind, because I had held on to this vague idea that we’d have a moment for the bell, but you can’t speak it, you can’t articulate it, you can’t plan for that. The worst thing you can do is try to engineer a moment like that because it’s sort of hokey and weird.” – Nick Aldis, SportsKeeda interview October 18, 2018.
While this was a great This Day in Wrestling History moment as well as a personal one for Cody, he would lose the NWA World Heavyweight Championship later that year to Aldis.
Aldis would then begin his record setting run as champion that recently ended.
With AEW and the NWA working together, would you like to see another match between Nick Aldis and Cody? Let us know in the comments below.
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