Austin Aries on his Impact Wrestling controversy following his match with Johnny Impact, feels his controversy with Christy Hemme was the beginning of Cancel Culture, looks back on his WrestleMania match with Neville/Pac, and winning the ROH Championship

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By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Austin Aries
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com

Aries on Impact Wrestling controversy: This is the question I ask all the people, is, how do they know that I did that? How did they know that I got up after a few seconds and no sold and flipped everybody off, because the camera was on me. If I really went into business for myself and none of that was planned, why would they keep the cameras on me? Why would they, why would they have the camera on me the whole time so you all got to watch it? Wouldn’t they just cut the camera to Johnny and you never even saw that I was there. You never saw that. I got up and walked to the back. You never saw that I flipped anybody off. They would’ve just kept the camera in the middle of the ring on Johnny impact, the new champion. There was a camera waiting for me backstage. As soon as I got through the curtain, I cursed out Scott. Why would there be a camera there waiting? Why would they, why would they even get that on video? These are the questions that the fans and not even just the fans, but you know, the workers in the business who are, who also have, have, you know, commented about this over the years. It’s like, if you’re so smart to what we do, did you think about that? If that was really going on? Don’t you think they would’ve cut the cameras and you never would’ve even known that I did that. I can’t make them put me on camera.”

On the Christy Hemme controversy: “Looking back at that, that was almost like the beginning of the cancel culture. You know, like I did something in character, impromptu, to try to kind of just cover up a mistake my colleague made. And it was taken outta context and it was all of a sudden like Dan Solwold did this horrendous thing, not understanding that what I did was I (had) every intention to be a jerk. And it was supposed to be a bad guy doing a bad guy thing. This wasn’t something I, I did in private, you know, when, when the camera was off to admonish her. I wasn’t, you know, legitimately angry at her or, or anything of that sort, and that kind of took a life of its own. Cause I remember, you know, me and Christy talked once I knew there was any issue or, or she wasn’t sure how to take it. And that was really her thing. She didn’t know how to take it. We didn’t really talk after it happened. To me it, after it happened, I didn’t think about it cuz nobody said anything and it was again, um, the red light’s on and you know, this is, yes, we do have things that we talk about beforehand, but a lot of the things we just were doing in improv and in the moment, and, and that happens a lot in this industry. And that was one of those. And, and I just made a spur of the moment decision to try to get some heat off of this mistake. And, you know, I could have done a million different things. And the thing that I did made people feel uncomfortable.”

His WrestleMania 33 match against Neville (a/k/a Pac): “I don’t know why they put it in the position they did. I would just say, because, there’s so much great talent there. And there’s only so many hours for WrestleMania. You can’t possibly put everybody on this on the main show. I mean, that’s just the reality of it. I didn’t take it as a slight, personally, I had no issue with it personally. I was so grateful and excited to walk out in front of 70,000 people for WrestleMania at 38 years old after I’ve been told no so many times over my career, cuz I wasn’t big enough because I was too old. Whatever the case may be, that I had somehow manifested this on my own in a lot of ways to be able to walk out that ramp in front of 70,000 people who were in their seats, ready to watch what they thought might be the best match of the night. And I had been to other WrestleManias and, and, you know, a lot of times people were still trickling in the stadium. They weren’t in their seat, they weren’t ready. Uh, cuz they weren’t afraid what they were gonna miss anything special. But you know, I think we both took some pride that man, this place is pretty full already and people are ready for this match and they’re excited for this match.”

On winning ROH Title from Samoa Joe: “(Gabe Sapolsky) put a lot of of trust and, you know, he gambled and put me in that position cuz if it had, if it had fallen flat or it had kind of been a dud, you know, this whole amazing run and everything that Joe had done for that title, wouldn’t, wouldn’t have really paid off the way that it should have. And so, um, you know, I’ve gone back and watched that match recently and I was like, man, I was so green. And like, you. Thank you, Joe, for like really, you know, carrying a lot of that match, cuz I was just, you know, I was just doing the best I could for my, for my experience level at the time. Um, but yeah, you know, I think that we even structured that match and the whole idea was to kind of have that match feel like just another Samoa Joe title defense, one of these ones that you just kind of get through to the next guy. And, and so the way that whole match was structured from the beginning, kind of felt like that. And then there was this moment, and I remember thinking when, you know, I. There’s no one move I’m gonna hit on this guy that’s gonna beat him. What I need is a moment, uh, a small crack that opens up to where I can hit this flurry of moves in succession to have a chance to beat this guy who’s been unstoppable. And that was it.”

Other topics include breaking into the business, CYN, EC3, Controversy with Christy Hemme, Rhett Titus controversy, Impact Wrestling, Johnny Impact controversy, ROH, Samoe Joe, WWE, NXT, Neville, WrestleMania, Gabe Sapolsky and more.

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