When Nick Aldis first met Marty Scurll 15 years go in England, he was the “little kid” the current National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight champion and friends had to pick up and drive to their training sessions.

On Saturday, the best friends will be standing across from the ring from each other with the NWA championship on the line at The Crockett Cup pay-per-view at Cabarrus Arena in Concord, NC.

“At first me and my mates were sort of like, ‘Oh God we’ve got to have this little kid with us,” the 32-year-old Aldis said in a phone interview. “Because even though he was a couple of years younger than us, he really seemed like a little kid at the time.”

Aldis lived about 40 minutes from Scurll in rural England, but it was the way to Dropkixx Academy in Purfleet. So the owner of the academy, Frank Rimer, asked Aldis if he could give the then 15-year-old Scurll a ride because he wasn’t old enough to drive himself. The two immediately made a connection.

“Very, very quickly we just became instant friends and we could feel the passion,” Aldis said. “I think we’ve always known from the get-go that neither of us was going to give up. We were going to keep going [in wrestling]. … We were going to make it work one way or the other.”

They’ve made it to the point where both are viable main event draws. Their match for a belt once held by Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes and Harley Race will headline The Crockett Cup starting at 7 p..m. on traditional pay-per-view, HonorClub or FITE.

The show, run by the NWA and Ring of Honor, also features an eight-team tag tournament that includes The Briscoes, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, and Villain Enterprises among others. The first tournament was held in 1986 and won by the Road Warriors.

Aldis slotted The Briscoes as the favorites but has a soft spot for PCO of Villain Enterprises and his career resurgence because of how Pierre Carl Ouellet treated he and Scurll in their younger days.

“The [others] treated us like garbage,” Aldis said. “They treated me, Marty, Stu Bennett who is Wade Barrett, they treated us like complete s–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.”

Aldis and Scurll didn’t need pull to make it their Crockett Cup match happen, but earned it on “merit”.

“This was the natural one to do.” Aldis said. “We know that both of us belong there in that spot.”

It’s part of the strategy of the NWA, bought by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan in 2017, to work together with larger promotions and build to the one big match using their “Ten Pound of Gold” YouTube series — much like HBO boxing used to do with its “24/7” shows.

Aldis recently had a high-profile feud with Cody Rhodes. They had a four-star match at All In and the rematch at the NWA 70th Anniversary show. Aldis’ match with Scurll has been given similar treatment.

“What we decided and what we knew we were good at was telling stories and taking people on a ride,” Aldis said of the NWA. “I think that has very quickly become out defining characteristic to the brand”.

The seed for this match was planted a year ago, when the 6-foot-4, 242-pound Aldis sat ringside in April 2017 for Scurll’s first chance at the Ring of Honor world championship.

Aldis received opportunities in his career quicker than the 5-foot-9, 195-pound Scrull. Aldis, a two-time NWA champion, was a star in England before working for TNA and Global Force Wrestling for the majority of 2012-2017.

When a shot in WWE didn’t materialize, which Aldis calls “the eternal mystery of the business”, he signed with NWA and won the first title match under Corgan’s leadership.

Aldis’ current persona is impeccably dressed The National Treasure. It’s a name he arrived at because he would always joke with his wife, WWE superstar Mickie James, that every British actor or actress was a “national treasure.”

“I said that’s kind of got a double meaning [for me] because some people take it to mean that I’m trying to be a national treasure to America and some people take it like I’m a patriotic Brit,” Aldis said.

While Aldis had early success, Scurll toiled away in the industry before transforming from Party Marty to The Villain between 2014-2015 during his time with Progress Wrestling. It’s exploded into one of the hottest personas in the industry over the past three years in Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he is a former IWGP Junior Heavyweight champion. Scrull was a member of Bullet Club and currently part of The Elite.

“We are drawing from both business and personal because, yes, there was a sustained period were I was ahead of him and then there’s been a sustained period where he was ahead of me,” Aldis said. “Rather than being jealous of one another, when the shoe was on the other foot, we were constructively envious. I was inspired by what he had done, the same way he was inspired by what I was able to do.”

It also means something to him that he and Scurll have been able to create their current success without a creative machine behind them.

“The Villain character and the National Treasure character are 100-percent ours,” Aldis said. “We crafted them, molded them, shaped them and put them out. This isn’t someone else’s vision or someone else’s creative going, ‘OK, you are now this. This is what you do. This is how you eat. This is how you walk.’ We’ve done all that. I think people can sense it.”

Despite his different path to success, Aldis and James have made it work, but not without “great difficulty” working for separate promotions and being on the road, making their 4-year-old son Donovan Patrick is a priority.

“There is very rarely a day where one of us isn’t here for him, so that’s the important thing,” said Aldis, who is proud of what James has accomplished and glad she is back with WWE. “Obviously there are days where it’s a nanny or it’s a relative or something like that but for the most part we are tagging in and out a lot. There is not a ton of time for each other, but we have time for our son.”

While he has watched fellow TNA alums like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe get their chances with WWE late in their careers, Aldis is only concerned with what’s in front of him now. Trying to draw money for the NWA is creatively a three-man team of Aldis, Corgon and vice president Dave Lagana. Aldis believes a wrestler making themselves a commodity in the industry is more valuable than just getting an ordinary WWE opportunity.

“If you can do that you have much more control of your own destiny,” he said. “You can make it last a lot longer because you are not completely at the whim of somebody else.”