Chris Featherstone sent along the following:
Former Impact Wrestling and GFW World Champion Nick “Magnus” Aldis was the latest guest on the Pancakes & Powerslams Show. Magnus discussed how Sting was the legend with put him over and helped him become a main event star, working with Samoa Joe, and much more.
Magnus went into great detail regarding his departure from GFW.
“There was no release. There was nothing like that. A contract was offered to me, which I declined… Anthem offered me a contract, I read the contract, it’s not something that — I’ll say this in the nicest way that I can; it’s not a contract that anyone with any value, any sense of self-value or self-worth would sign. To me, the only time you should put your name on the dotted line, is if you are getting something in return. Because, otherwise, you may as well be an independent contractor. There’s no point in signing a contract to make you exclusive to one place if you’re not getting anything in return.
“I wish them nothing but the best, but, the only guy I was really excited to work with was Alberto [El Patron], and I worked with him right away. And I just didn’t feel like I would be challenged there the way I wanted to be challenged, creatively and artistically. Obviously, monetarily, they’re not going to be able to be in a position to offer anything that would offset those things. So, I politely said that I won’t sign this contract, however, if you need me, we can work on a handshake which we did for a number of shows. I guess the only thing that bothered me a bit was the fact that I feel like I’ve been very dependable and loyal to Jeff Jarrett, and I didn’t find out from him that they didn’t want to keep working that arrangement. Which is fine in a sense, because I didn’t have any long-term plans to be around that stuff anyway. I could see all of the negativity and I just didn’t want to be associated with it. But, at the same time, I had dates in my calendar that I had written down, just like any other independent promotion. And then I had to find out by somebody else, like apparently we can’t do something with a guy who is not under contract. It would have been nice to find out from the guy who [I was loyal to]. But, other than that, let’s face it — they’ve got way bigger problems at the moment. Overall, it was a combination of all of those things that I said I was gonna go ahead and back away slowly.”
The interview is available in full at this link.