Nick Aldis was recently a guest on The Kurt Angle Show, where he spoke about the match he had against Sting at TNA Bound For Glory 2013, and how he became accepted by the fans.

“Without question the biggest step forward for me. The thing I remember the most about that day actually involved Kurt [Angle]. The way we had set that whole thing up was the student and the master. That was the premise, and it was well done. I remember Eric Bischoff was the primary producer of most of that angle, but it started all the way back with my match with AJ [Styles]. I had this very good match with AJ in St. Louis where I had lost, and again, thinking back to lessons I had learned listening to Bret [Hart] – he always said there’s an art to losing, and sometimes losing is the match that makes you. I felt like in the eyes of the TNA fans, the match I had with AJ where I lost, was the one where TNA fans went, ‘Okay, we accept him, he’s knocking on the door of the upper echelon on the card and we’re gonna let him in.’ Jeff Jarrett deserves a lot of credit for that. But that set up where I was having a crisis of confidence, and I really liked the angle. Sting was heavily involved in it and he sort of went to bat for me.”

Aldis continued.

“I remember we got to the pay-per-view. Certainly at this point, I had learned enough to know, okay, I can’t go in with any expectations, but it felt like the right thing to do would be for me to get my hand raised. But obviously, it’s Sting, and I’m not going to come in assuming that. I remember I got there that day and our agent, I forget who it was, said, ‘X amount of minutes, Sting up.’ I went, ‘Okay’, and just sat down with Kurt at catering. Sting came over and sits down and he goes ‘Hey, did they tell you the finish?’ I go, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and he goes, ‘We’re not doing that. The whole reason we set all this up is for you to get your hand raised. This is crazy.’ I remember just being like, ‘Well, I don’t know what to say.’ This is Sting. Sting goes, ‘Not only are we not doing that, you’re beating me with your finish in the middle.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ He got up and said, ‘I’ll go take care of this.’ He walked off and I’m almost in tears because that’s such an overwhelming thing.”