Night 1 of SummerSlam featured some big moments. One of which happened to be Nick Aldis returning to the ring to face Gunther. Aldis stepped into the ring for the first time in three years for what was his first match inside a WWE ring. While it was Gunther who picked up the victory, one could argue that Aldis stole the spotlight.
While talking about his return to the ring on WWE Now, Nick Aldis noted that he found out about the match last time WWE was in Saudi Arabia back in June.
“That’s the first thing I told Ed Koskey when I first found out about this. Look, to find out quite out of the blue, you can have a match with one of the top guys in the world, right? Top guy in the company, SummerSlam, in a stadium. Amazing, right?’
“But then, when he told me this, that was in Saudi Arabia, and I went, ‘When is SummerSlam?’ He said August 1st. Today’s June the 30th or June the 29th, and I was, ‘That’s a month.’ “And I go, ‘Ed, there’s a big difference between physique shape and ring shape.’ And I go, ‘I am not in ring shape. You have an awful lot of faith in me to…’
“Because obviously, without having too many conversations, I had a pretty good idea of what it was gonna be. And I was, ‘Yeah, that’s great and everything.’ But I talked about this on Chris Van Vliet this week, where I said I think the most sort of surprising part of all this was how casual Triple H and upper management seemed to be about this. No one’s kind of gone, ‘Are you ready? Can you do this? Are you good with this?’ They were just kind of, ‘Ah, have a match with Gunther.’ I haven’t worked in three years. And of all people, with Gunther. Right?”