Former WWE/Impact/ROH star Austin Aries appeared on Brian Hebner’s “Refin’ It Up” podcast. Among other topics, Aries talked about the heat that Jim Cornette has with him stemming from their time together in ROH:
“Jim came into Ring of Honor at a time right after a regime change. I was very close with Gabe Sapolsky. I spent a lot of time in the Ring of Honor offices. In those days, I was running the school. Obviously, I owe Gabe a lot for putting me in the position he did with that company.”
“When the regime change happened, there was a lot of disorder. They brought Adam Pearce in. I was asked to kind of help him run some of the locker rooms when he couldn’t be there, but I don’t think anybody else was given that information. So it came off as me trying to take over control, but it was something I was asked to do, but I wasn’t really given the tools to do it effectively.”
“Then they brought Jim in. Jim’s a smart guy. I mean, he’s been around the business a long time. He’s figured out a way to be relevant and successful. I think he was trying to work his way into a position of power, which eventually he did. The problem was, at the time, I was having a lot of issues with the office of Ring of Honor and how they were doing their business. They were taking away hotel rooms and cutting everyone’s pay. A lot of the things that we fought for that made that place appealing for talent was quickly changing once the new regime was put in place.”
“I took issue with that and I stood up for a lot of the guys at a certain point on the bottom of the company because a lot of people were having concerns over the HDNet contracts that were being offered out. It didn’t affect me personally, but it was affecting some of my students and a lot of the guys up and down the card. I made the mistake, and I learned my lesson, of sticking my neck out and going to bat for everybody. It quickly turned into Austin Aries trying to pull a coup. He’s a rabble rouser. He’s trying to pit the office vs the boys and me.”
“The GM at the time, Syd Eick. I had it out on the phone on a conference call. I called him out on a lot of bullsh*t that he didn’t know that I knew about. So there was definitely an issue between me and Syd. I’ve never had an issue with Jim, but I definitely did have an issue with Syd. I didn’t think he respected any of the boys. He was making more money than they were paying anybody at that time, including me as the top guy as the champ. I wasn’t even making $50,000 a year there at the time on top.”
“I really just felt like I was an issue and a problem for Jim because yes, at that time, there were some things in my personal life going on with the relationship that had ended at the time of someone else in the business that also involved another one of my colleagues. That created some personal issues with me. It was very difficult going through that personally, which obviously Jim had no idea about, and really, nobody did. I was dealing with that and that’s why it could be difficult to date within the business. So yeah, at that time, I was going through some stuff and probably was coming to work not in the best of moods.”
“The sad thing is, I was so excited to work with Jim. I had so much respect for him. I grew up watching him and I was excited to have the opportunity to learn from him. I was being put in a position of helping out in the office area with Adam and what they were doing, or at least, early on, that was something that was discussed. I was keen to learn from Jim and his knowledge, and instead, I think that a lot of guys were kind of pushed out.”
“It’s funny because I could tell something was up because I was booked on almost all the shows. There were two shows that were a drive for me that they said they didn’t have room for me. That to me was kind of suspicious because again, I’d been on just about everything and this wasn’t even like it was a flight. It was a drive for me. So I called Cary at the time and left a message to try to talk with him. I left a message for Jim. They kind of both gave me the runaround. I don’t think Cary ever even got back to me. Jim played a little bit of a run around. So we never had a conversation.”
We got to TV and they started giving guys their walking papers and telling guys, ‘Hey, we’re finishing you up on these couple of shows. No one talked to me for like two days. I couldn’t get Jim or Cary to even have a conversation with me.”
“So finally everyone once everybody left, the last day at tapings, everyone’s leaving the building, everyone’s gone, then Jim says, ‘Oh, hey, Austin, we can talk now.’ We sat and talked, and the issue of Syd was brought up. I said, ‘Yeah, I can tell you why I have an issue with this guy, but that doesn’t affect my ability to come and work. I don’t have to deal with him directly. I just come and do my job.’ So we talked about the issue, but we didn’t really talk about a solution. I left there kind of not really knowing what the solution was. The solution was to passive aggressively just stop booking me.”
“So you know, when Jim goes on these big tirades about how he fired me and this and that, it’s like, no, man. You sat in front of me and didn’t even have the decency or the balls to actually do that. You left that all open ended, and it was all very passive aggressive. The few times I’ve been near him since he’s taken this stance on me, and I’ve been in locker rooms, he hasn’t felt the need to come and say anything to me directly. So, you know, I think Jim, you know, he’s got a podcast. He needs to have content. It’s fashionable right now to kind of sh*t on me. It seems to be the thing that gets you a lot of likes on Twitter and a lot of likes on your YouTube show, so that’s cool. But again, what people say from the comfort of their own home and what they’re willing to say to you when you’re face to face a lot of times are two very different things. Jim is no different in that case.”
More from the interview: Austin Aries says he was dealing with personal issues, regrets how he left Impact Wrestling, hopes to return and leave in a different way
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Refin’ It Up with Brian Hebner with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
