WZ’s Harry Kettle recently spoke with Austin Aries for CLICKON, and below are some interview highlights along with the full interview:
On his vegan lifestyle’s influence on others:
“I grew up eating burgers, brats, eating cheese, I know the other side of the coin. I lived it for twenty years of my life. I know the difference in how I feel and to see other people taking those steps that I took so long ago, it’s really encouraging and it makes my heart smile.”
On helping people get over their issues:
“My profession has built up a platform and a certain amount of influence with younger people, and I do take that seriously. I love to able to go out there for a night in the professional wrestling world and help them forget about their problems for three hours.
But now I’m thinking alright, instead of helping them forget about their problems maybe I can think about helping them solve some of their problems.”
On problems in society:
“If you wanna live fast and die young, it’s your life and you get one of them, live it how you want. They want to find the cure to cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease, let’s find the cure to dementia or Alzheimer’s – we’re looking for all these cures and we don’t want to talk about the one thing that’s affecting this on a daily basis: what we’re putting in our bodies.”
On his new look:
“That was kind of a joke for my friends and family, I literally looked like the sunglasses emoji guy. That was kind of the root of all that, to have some fun. It’s kind of funny but I didn’t realise that me cutting my hair or changing my look was something that was going to be chronicled for a couple of weeks straight. It’s so amazing sometimes, the little things you can do to grab people’s attention.”
On having any regrets:
“I learned a while back don’t try to figure out or make sense of the moment, but just trust that it’s going to lead you to the right place. I like to think I’m someone who knows his strength and is well aware of his weaknesses, and doesn’t really hide them that much.
Are there times or moments or conversations I’ve had where I wish I could’ve done them differently? Of course. But that being said, I’m very happy that the career I’ve etched out for myself for 17 years now, I can say I’ve done it all exclusively on my own terms. I stayed true to who I was and I wasn’t willing to compromise my morals to get ahead.”
On speaking out about his WWE departure:
“There’s been a lot of speculation and a lot of assumptions made. On my half I’ve spoken not to speak out on anything yet, and there will come a time and a place for that and it’s just not now. In the mean time, I’ll let everyone else continue to make assumptions but we all know what happens when people assume.
That’s just the world we live in now. One person puts out a report from an unnamed source and next thing you know, it’s regurgitated over and over again until it becomes fact when a lot of times it’s not based on reality whatsoever. When the time is right, the record will be set straight.”
On what we can expect in the future:
“Expect the unexpected. I’m going to very careful and pick my spots of where and when you see me, and obviously I’ve got a lot of things outside of the wrestling world that I’m trying to build up. I really hope to bring these two worlds together in some ways, and hopefully the things you do see and hear from me are adding value to your life and changing lives for the better.”
https://youtu.be/_Y-MgukJ3tE
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
