Austin Aries was featured prominently on WWE television earlier this year. He made his first appearances on Raw and 205 Live while he got healthy after an orbital bone injury sidelined him for a few months. Later, he joined the main roster as a competitor in WWE’s Cruiserweight division. Aries lost a great match to former Cruiserweight Champion Neville at WrestleMania 33 in a match that was moved to the Kickoff Show.
If you watched the seven-hour WrestleMania broadcast (yes, it was really that long) then you would have seen it, but if not you may have missed it. They had two more PPV matches together and shortly after that, Aries was gone from WWE.
What wasn’t known at the time was why Aries was released, so it’s a good thing he spoke up this week to let us know all about it.
Aries appeared on the always excellent ‘Talk is Jericho’ podcast hosted by Chris Jericho. During the discussion, Aries spoke about a lot of different things including why he was released and if he asked for it. Here are some highlights with thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcript.
“I mean, long story short, and I can’t speak to stuff that I’ve read or that people have read because those things were never brought to me personally, so that’s really… I don’t like to deal with speculation. Just plain and simple, I was told that they had nothing for me creatively. I was set to start… I just started rehabbing some nagging injuries on my neck. I’m obviously finishing up the program with Neville, and it left me… they didn’t have anything solid for me creatively, so speaking with the doctors, that it was a good time to give me a little time off, let me rehab, get some strength back. I had lost some size. And I was looking forward to that and then I got a call actually the day after I started doing that and just said that there was nothing for me creatively and that was really it.”
“I wasn’t completely surprised. I felt maybe from things leading up to it that that maybe the direction we’re going to head, but, hey man, that’s a business decision and the bottom line is I think I appreciate the opportunities that I was given there. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t ask to be released. It never crossed my mind. I never had that conversation with anybody. I was more than happy to spend the time getting healthy and figuring out what they had for me next because, literally, I was happy to do whatever. I’ll go to NXT, put me as a mouthpiece, take me out of 205 [Live]. You can do anything with me. Like, I’m open and I’m at a point in my career where I’ve won championships, I’ve done all these things, and it’s cool, and I realized that I take pride in being a utility guy.”
The dreaded “creative has nothing for me” line is what no wrestler wants to here. What’s sad is that the creative team couldn’t think of something for a guy as talented as Aries, yet others like James Ellsworth has a role barking while on a leash. Go figure. What a creative team, huh?
Aries also discussed a tweet he sent out after the WrestleMania 33 DVD came out and he joked about how his match with Neville wasn’t on it because it was on the Kickoff Show.
“There was a tweet I put out that garnered some headlines. I put a tweet out telling everyone that the WrestleMania 33 is available in Canada on Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, one of the best matches of the night was left off the DVD.’ Right? So people took that and made it into, ‘oh, one of the reasons Austin Aries left was because he’s mad that his match wasn’t on the DVD.’ So I’m going to out myself here, okay? I get paid to put tweets out sometimes. Okay? Sometimes, I’m paid to put things over by people who have things that they’re selling and it just so happened that the one thing I’m paid this time to put over was that the DVD of WrestleMania 33 was now available in Canada on Blu-Ray. Well, when I went to put it on, I realized, ‘oh s–t! I’m not even on this DVD that I’m supposed to promote. How would I do that in all my sarcasm and wit?’ And that’s how I chose to, right? And so, people took that, and I didn’t even think about the ‘oh, I might not get royalties for that now?’ s–t, I didn’t even think about it.”
That’s a problem with Twitter and other forms of social media sometimes. People can be joking about something, yet others want to take it seriously and make a big story out of something. Was WWE mad about that? Perhaps, but we’ll never really know.
Aries also talked about his feud with Neville while noting he had no problem putting him over numerous times and that he was looking forward to what was next when he found out he was released.
You can listen to Aries’ full chat with Jericho on Talk is Jericho on Podcast One or iTunes now.
