A current WWE star has recalled how Kurt Angle first scouted him and recommended him to TNA Wrestling many years ago.
Before siging with WWE off the back of a run with the NWA, Nick Aldis first rose to prominence in TNA, where he debuted under the name Brutus Magnus before it was later shortened to just Magnus.
In an interview with Devil’s in the Detail, Aldis was asked where the name Magnus came from, which led to him telling the story of how he first joined TNA in the first place, and Kurt Angle’s role in him being scouted.
Aldis explained:
“(The name Magnus) was given to me. I’m told that it was Dixie Carter, the then-owner of TNA, was the one who came up with it. I’m sure it was one of those things where they were probably all in a room and they were sort of playing around with different names.
“Before I went to TNA, my big break was on a TV show called Gladiators, which was the British version of American Gladiators.
“On that show, my character was called Oblivion, but I was really just a pro-wrestler on that show. I was cutting wrestling promos, I was talking trash, I was a bad guy, I was very in your face.
“That’s what raised my profile in the UK, and TNA at the time were doing really well in the UK, so they were looking for a British talent. Between Dixie and Kurt Angle, they’d seen the show and were like…
“Kurt Angle apparently called the office – this is what Kurt told me – Kurt said he saw me on TV and called the office and said, ‘This guy has to be a wrestler. There’s no way this guy, he talks like that, that he’s not in wrestling.’ And he knew they were looking for someone.
“I think what happened was, when they started going, ‘Okay, we’re gonna bring this kid in’ – I was a kid, I was 21 – I think maybe along the way they sort of went, ‘He’s on the show Gladiators,’ and somehow that morphed into then wanting to make me sort of like a Roman Gladiator.
“Which in hindsight kind of missed the mark, but I think that’s where it all came from. So I think they started playing around with like, ‘Okay, what’s a sort of Roman-y sounding name or something that elicits that sort of character,’ so that’s how it came about I guess.”
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In the same interview, Aldis discussed the instructions he was given by Triple H when he first debuted as WWE SmackDown General Manager – read more by clicking here.
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