Austin Aries On Using His Platform For Change

Austin Aries joined VOC Nation's "In the Room" podcast recently to discuss his departure from WWE and his controversial exit from Impact Wrestling, touching on his experiences traveling the country.

"I've had the opportunity to live all over this country," Aries stated. "I lived in the east coast for a while, Philadelphia, actually. I grew up in Milwaukee, I spent time in Minnesota, I lived in Baltimore, I've lived in different places in Los Angeles, Florida, and now I live in Las Vegas. The interesting part of that is, you see that every part of the country has their own unique energy and culture, and things of that [nature]."

Aries continued by stating, "The greatest thing I've always said wrestling did for me, is it took a poor white kid from a suburb of Milwaukee and it gave me the opportunity to expand my world view and travel the globe, on other people's dimes, to do something I really love to do, and it completely expanded my horizons and how I see everything."

Aries discussed current world affairs, and how it made him reevaluate his priorities. The nearly 20-year veteran also discussed his role as an entertainer and wrestler.

"At the end of the day, no matter what, I've found on this globe that people want the same basic things," Aries noted. "Unfortunately along the way we get educated and taught to maybe skew from those things, family, love, and community. It kinda puts us in the situation that we see now in many places in the world. As this viral event started to unfold and [change] the landscape, and you start to look at priorities, and now the escalation of where we're at in some other areas, as well," Aries said. "The kind of discord that we have, it's hard for me."

Aries continued, "Listen, I love to be an entertainer, and my job is to help people forget about problems, but there are some problems that we probably shouldn't be helping people forget about. We should probably be working together to fix [them]. I really enjoy helping people solve and fix their problems. To have a platform and to have people's ear, and to not use it to do something other than to just line your pockets, that doesn't really work for me."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit VOC Nation and give a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.