Nick Aldis claims that Marty Scurll had the pull to get PCO in Ring Of Honor. Today, beginning at 7 PM EST on HonorClub and FITE TV, the National Wrestling Alliance along with Ring Of Honor and CMLL will present the Crockett Cup show from Concord, North Carolina. The headlining match of the card is Nick Aldis defending the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship against his longtime friend Marty Scurll. Related Article Knockouts Tag Team Championship Match And More Announced For 6/3 Episode Of IMPACT Wrestling Scurll and Aldis have spoken with a number of media outlets on the lead-up to their showdown and Aldis recently spoke with the New York Post. Aldis went over the card for the event and was asked who he thinks will win the Crockett Cup tournament and stated that he believes The Briscoes are going to win but he has a soft spot for the team of PCO and Brody King. The reason for that soft spot is because of how PCO treated he and Scurll during the early portions of their careers and Aldis added that Marty Scurll is a reason why PCO is in ROH because Scurll has pull within the company. "The [others] treated us like garbage,” Aldis said. “They treated me, Marty, Stu Bennett who is Wade Barrett, they treated us like complete sh*t and Carl Ouellet came over, he’s been everywhere, and he treated us with respect and taught me and wrestled me when I was 19 years old… He’s in Ring of Honor right now because how he treated Marty, because Marty has that much pull.” Fightful's Jeremy Lambert also had the opportunity to chat with Nick Aldis for an exclusive interview and to check that out, click here.<doc-sep>In a bloody and personal affair, Nick Aldis defeated Marty Scurll to retain his NWA Championship at the Crockett Cup. Nick Aldis and Marty Scurll put on an incredible match on Saturday night that got a lot more violent than fans were expecting. Their personal histories were played up leading into this match as Scurll claims Aldis was the first person he ever met in the wrestling business. Aldis asked Scurll to be his tag partner in the Crockett Cup tag tournament back in March, but Scurll rejected the offer and challenged Aldis for his coveted NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship instead. Aldis seemed frustrated in the buildup that Scurll had challenged him but as time went on it seemed more and more that he was actually scared of Scurll and the momentum he was riding. The match started off with grappling and chain wrestling as both men showed off their British catch-as-catch-can techniques. Kamilla Kaine, Adlis’s valet and bodyguard, was thrown out early in the match as Scurll tricked the referee into thinking she had attacked him while the ref wasn’t looking. Aldis got more intense and calculated after he lost Kaine as he didn’t have his safety net in his corner. Both men frequently switched from submission-based wrestling to heavy strikes as they both kept countering each other’s offense. Aldis seemed to blade while he brawled on the floor with Scurll, and he might have cut too deep as his face was coated with blood in seconds. The blood added intensity to the contest as things reached a fever pitch, with both men trading submission finishers to attempt to seal the victory. Kaine returned after the ref was taken out by an errant strike and attempted to spear Scurll, but Aldis stopped her and said he wanted to win the belt on his own. Scurll didn’t seem to mind a cheap win though, as he hit a low blow and almost secured the pinfall on a roll-up. Aldis eventually locked in his finisher, The King’s Lynn Cloverleaf, to secure the win as Scurll had to tap out. Both men got on the mic afterwards and praised the other while they surveyed the bloodied canvas. The Crockett Cup finals also ended up being a violent affair as PCO and Brody King took on Thomas “Bram” Latimer and Royce Isaacs. King and PCO took home the win along with the new NWA Tag Team Titles and the prestigious Crockett Cup. Saturday’s event was a solid card with compelling matches and great storytelling and it led to a successful event for the NWA. The future looks bright for Aldis, King, PCO, and the newly invigorated NWA.<doc-sep>It’s been more than 30 years since the Crockett Cup last took place, at a time when the National Wrestling Alliance was in its heyday. The show was built around a tag team tournament featuring the likes of the Road Warriors, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, and The Super Powers made up of Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff. After the long absence, the Crockett Cup returns this Saturday, April 27 at the Cabarrus Arena in Concord, N.C. with a main event that will pit NWA champion Nick Aldis against Marty Scurll. It’s a match 15 years in the making between the longtime friends from rural England who finally will square off in the ring. “It means a great deal,” explained Aldis. “Certainly, my body of work for the last couple of years has been something I'm very proud of. Obviously, it's the best work of my career but I also think it's the most important. In addition to that, it happens to coincide with Marty really coming into his own and establishing himself as a top star in this industry.” MORE: Join DAZN and watch more than 100 fight nights a year The upcoming Crockett Cup — promoted by both the NWA and Ring of Honor — will once again feature a tag-team tournament featuring talent from around the world. That includes The Briscoe Brothers, Satoshi Kojima and Yugi Nagata, Flip Gordon teaming with Bandido, and the legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Express with Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson. The show will air live on pay-per-view via cable and satellite, and via the FITE TV app. The show also will stream live for subscribers of the ROH HonorClub streaming service. Aldis and Scurll have always wanted to face each other but it never lined up with their careers going in different directions. While Aldis spent more than eight years with Impact Wrestling, Scurll was making a name for himself on the UK independent scene. Things are different now. Scurll has recreated himself as “The Villain” while working for NJPW and Ring of Honor where is part of Villain Enterprises. Meanwhile, Aldis parted ways with Impact Wrestling and signed with the NWA under new owner Billy Corgan where he is now in his second reign as the NWA world heavyweight champion. It’s all part of the big plan to bring back the NWA and restore the prestige it once had. “I think there's a lot of people who want to see the NWA title back on that stage because they grew up with it and it means so much,” said Aldis. “It's finally being handled along with the NWA in a much better way now and bringing back the prestige. People still care about it. It got lost in the shuffle but there's still an audience for it.” Many have wanted to see the NWA get back to its roots and restore the dignity and importance it once carried when the likes of Ric Flair, Harley Race, and Ricky Steamboat held the world championship. That resurgence is slowly underway with the NWA touring more around the world and trying to earn back the respect of the fans. “It's been very satisfying for a number of reasons,” explained Aldis. “One that really stood out to me, and I guess I didn't expect it, was how often I've had fans come up to me, especially in the Mid-Atlantic area, and very emotionally tell me how much it means to them. “What I wasn't prepared for was the number of people who come to me — some of them have got tears in their eyes — and they say you don't know how much this means to me. I used to watch the NWA at 6:05 p.m. on TBS with my grandfather and say that, to me, that will always be the real world championship.” With the resurgence of the NWA is also one with Aldis’ career. His time with Impact Wrestling saw him win multiple championships including a run as the Impact world champion. When he left there for good in 2017 after turning down a contract, he thought he would be in high demand but things didn’t turn out the way he imaged. “I'm not alone in this but there's a lot of people who thought I'd end up in WWE or at least have an opportunity and I didn't get a sniff. It was a tough pill to swallow at the time and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do next. Marty and I spoke all the time but it was when I finally checked my pride and checked my ego. For the first time, I was looking up to him and being inspired by what he was doing whereas up until that point, it had always been the other way around because I had always gotten an opportunity before he had and then I would always try to help open the door for him wherever I could. “I had found myself looking at what he had done by going out on his own and producing his own vignettes and creating this whole character and really creating one of the most iconic characters of the last decade. I started going, 'yeah, that's the real work'.” That was recreating himself while trying to bring back the storied name of the NWA at the same time. It saw him become the “National Treasure”, a pompous champion who looks the part with his size and physique. When it comes to his role with the NWA, he was determined to “put this belt back on the stage it deserves”. That meant taking it from the ground up and winning it on an unlikely stage Combat Zone Wrestling, a promotion more known for violent, hardcore matches than the esteem of the NWA. And the crowd at the December 2017 event did not take too kindly to their wrestling match but it served its purpose. “They hated me,” explained Aldis. “But that drove me because I said this ain't the place for us. We did that on purpose. There was a method to the madness. A lot of people were like why were you at CZW? That was the exact point was to show there are a lot of people in this business who make up for a lack of craftsmanship with bullsh-t and gimmicks and silliness which is fine. If you like that stuff, that's fine but we used it as a way to show the contrast that I'm as far away from that as possible. If you want that, if you want to see the exact opposite of this sh-t, come and watch the NWA. “Fast forward a few months to, let's be real, the true main event of 'All In', the most talked-about show of the year with Cody and I and to have that moment everybody was going crazy before we even touched, it was gratification that I was right.” The crowd was, to steal the phrase, all in on that match, standing and cheering before Aldis and Cody even locked up for the first time. Give credit to the “Ten Pounds of Gold” digital series produced by NWA Vice President Dave Lagana, building up the importance of the storied championship that was previously held by Cody’s father, the legendary American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. “With Cody, it was serendipity,” said Aldis. “It was just meant to be because of his father and what it meant to him and where he was at and where I was at and what we had to prove. Every now and then, you get those moments where everything aligns and all the circumstances are right. “On top of that, Cody and I ended up having great physical chemistry and matched up really well. I think that's always something that can be revisited somewhere down the road because that's exciting and it's a testament to my body of work.” It was all part of a working relationship between the NWA and ROH, one where two brands seem to fit with their approach and substance.<doc-sep>
NWA Worlds Champion Nick Aldis recently spoke with Kevin Kellam about his opponent Marty Scurll at the upcoming NWA Crockett Cup event this Saturday. Aldis also talks about how the NWA Championship has garnered a rejuvenated interest into professional wrestling thanks greatly in part to staying true to the promotion and title’s historical roots. He also talks about his chemistry with Cody Rhodes and the value that the streaming video medium has been to the classic letters of the NWA. Nick Aldis talks about his relationship with Marty Scurll and how their NWA Worlds Championship match at The Crockett Cup is based on merit as well as relationship: It’s a couple of things really. One being obviously that we are genuinely friends, we are best mates, we have known each other since he was 15 and I was 17—but the other part of it is that we’re here based on merit, you know? It’s not me going to the NWA office and being like, ‘I really want to main event this show with Marty Scurll.’ And it’s not Marty Scurll lobbying Ring of Honor and saying, ‘I really want to wrestle Nick. Let’s do that.’ We’re the natural match-up. He’s the natural best option for a title match. It’s the best option for business between the two organizations and we’ve proven that with the box office and the amount of coverage that we’ve got leading up to this PPV. That’s the part that’s really gratifying is that we’re here based on merit, and we’ve done it by creating our own characters now and marching to the beat of our own drum. That’s something that Marty really blazed a trail with, and that’s something that I was inspired by him to do. On how beneficial it’s been for the NWA product being on several streaming platforms throughout the past several years: It’s everything. You’re 100% right on that and it’s a very good observation. A lot has been said about where the NWA was in the late ’90s, the early 2000s and things of that nature and obviously not a particularly positive point of discussion, but in those people’s defense, the technology wasn’t sophisticated enough yet. And to your point, Billy was very smart to get access to the Houston wrestling footage which gave us access to a timeline of champions—WWE owns so much of all the content out there and kudos to them for having the wherewithal to do that from the very beginning. We have them to thank as well in many ways because the WWE Network is a fabulous resource for any wrestling fan or in my case, like a student of the game. One of the reasons I say wholeheartedly I think WWE is as responsible as anyone else for the renewed interest in the NWA because of the fantastic pieces they’ve put out on the rivalry between Flair and Dusty and Flair and Steamboat, and the way they romanticize the NWA in its heyday when they’ve talked about various people from that era, so we have them to thank in a lot of ways. You see a lot more NWA from the ’80s in the DNA of the sort of modern product than you do of anything else. That fast-paced, gritty, athletic wrestling style. On being asked so many times why he’s not in the WWE: They’ve already got a lot of guys. I think Marty would probably fall into the same bracket too. There’s only room for so many people at the top of one thing and if you want to be at the top, like, my presentation and my interviews, my work in the ring, it lends itself to a certain spot, you know? I’m not saying I want to be a big fish in a small pond, but I’m saying I’m valuable as a sort of person to be at forefront of a movement of a brand, an organization. You can listen to the full interview below: (Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone):