By Matthew Klink (@klinkmatt)

October 15, 2018

In the latest tale of epic embarrassment for Impact Wrestling, formerly the embarrassing brand with the childish name of TNA, Austin Aries no-sold a winning finisher and flipped off Don Callis, the Co-Executive Vice President of Impact Wrestling. In what was already a tale of woes, because of the odd story outside of the ring being told on social media and in press conferences, Aries made sure his defeat against Johnny Impact, was wrought with controversy.

Aries was due to take a pin and hand the Impact Wrestling Heavyweight Championship to the newly acquired face of the company, Johnny Impact. It was obvious that Aries wasn’t a fan of the direction of the story, but no-selling a finisher and flipping off your boss is no way to handle your disagreement with management. And beyond what it does for his character and him as a performer, Aries has also slapped the face of every wrestling fan and the sport of pro wrestling as a whole.

How? Well, its because of all of the time and effort I put into being a wrestling fan. Being a fan is starting to feel like a chore, with the hours of content available for us on TV and online. On top of that, we also have to deal with a world full of people who don’t understand why we watch it. Its what makes this fandom the most tiresome fandom there is. If I have to say “I know its fake” one more freaking time…my head is going to explode.

Aries’ actions give credence to every person who questions our allegiance to the sport and the art of pro wrestling. His no-selling of Johnny Impact’s finisher and thinking that’s fine, is beyond comprehension. We all know what this business is and we suspend belief to help this art work. We actively tell ourselves that the stairs on the side of the ring weigh 2 tons. We tell ourselves that landing on top of person after you do a flip is more devastating than a kick to the head. We tell ourselves that a sledgehammer, with a hand covering the blow, is one of the most deadly and despicable acts one could commit.

We tell ourselves all of those things because its great story telling!

I’m pretty sure if a disgruntled actor, on Game of Thrones, was allowed to get up in the middle of a scene after being burned alive by a dragon and walk off set… in full view of the camera…figurative heads would roll. The show wouldn’t just get hate mail, the actor, the director, the producers and the editors would all be canned for letting that run on TV. And I’m sure none of them would find it easy to explain why they let that go.

Impact Wrestling is live event programming, so you can’t always trust everyone to do what they are supposed to do. That being said, we definitely have one person to blame here…and its Austin Aries.

Regardless of the allegiances you have as a pro wrestling fan or our (as a universe of fans) never ending need to side with the talent over the corporations…this was dumb. As I already said, he’s not just making himself look like an idiot, but he makes us look stupid for watching and loving pro wrestling. If this video makes it to the public eye…what reason would they have to watch this (or trust us when we tell them its worth it) if the talent, who performs our favorite art, doesn’t even respect the business?

And if this was some sort of PR stunt to get people talking about Impact Wrestling again…way-to slap the entire industry in the face to get negative social media conversations.

I don’t give Impact Wrestling a ton of credit, but I will give them enough credit in saying that they did not want this happen during their show. I know that is a somewhat popular take on this incident, but this whole fiasco is almost worse if it was on purpose. I don’t think it was, but at least now I have it in writing before that news comes out.

Austin Aries has been running his mouth on friends and those he used to work with because of their choices to “sell-out” and stick with a company who didn’t want to give him the keys to the castle. I’ll tell you what, if he thinks this was the right decision, I’ll be happy to never see him in the ring again. There are too many guys who respect the business, tell better in-ring stories, and are more athletically gifted than Aries to make sure that there is room for him in my favorite sport.

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