Johnny Impact On Why He Has Heat With Triple H
Johnny Impact defeated Austin Aries two weeks ago to win the Impact World Championship at Bound For Glory, and while the match itself delivered, what happened afterwards had the wrestling world buzzing. Austin immediately got up after being pinned, yelled at Don Callis and walked to the back.
While people have since speculated about the nature of the finish, and regarding Austin's future with Impact Wrestling, the current Impact World Champion recently joined Anthony Carelli and Alicia Atout on Behind The Lights to talk about various topics, including his on-screen rivalry with Aries. Impact said that his beef with Aries was real, and that Austin crossed the line when he insulted his wife, Taya Valkyrie.
"The beef that him and I had was one hundred percent real", Impact revealed. "I guess if Austin's watching this, I apologize for using the word 'beef', because I know you don't like that kind of thing. But he in my opinion crossed the line. He legitimately pissed me off with the tweet that you mentioned specifically (calling his wife 'husky'), and I think it's because I tweeted a short joke at him. He hates short jokes, and I knew he hated short jokes, which is why I tweeted a thing like that at him.
"You're having a Twitter war. You're flinging poop back and forth, and I nailed him with a nice piece of poop, and he took the poop and threw it at Taya, and that pissed me off. I'm making light of it now because we're over it, it's past, it's done. But it did legitimately get me hot."
Johnny then dwelt on the topic of Austin's contract and Impact not renewing it, and gave his thoughts on if Aries had burned bridges with the company.
"Never say never in wrestling, and this whole situation is something that I've been thinking about, because I'm really proud of that match. He pushed me in a way in the ring that I haven't been pushed in a while, and it would be hard to have that much real emotion against someone that I really didn't want to strangle. But he didn't have to do what he did at the end of the match. And I feel like if he had just gone a step or two less far, him and I could've been cool, the office could've been cool with him, he could've worked out the contract thing, and he could've still been at Impact.
"And I'm not saying I'm sorry about how it worked out, because I'm not going to miss him, and I don't think many people in the Impact locker room are going to miss him either."
Impact also talked about his battle rap few years ago, where he mimicked Triple H and The Undertaker ahead of their WrestleMania match. Johnny revealed that he thought he and Triple H were cool, only to find out from The Miz that things weren't as amicable as he thought.
"I did that right when I left, and right when you leave WWE is when you usually get the biggest chip on your shoulder. It was kind of funny; I texted Hunter a couple of times and I told him I was going to do this battle rap video, and this was after I was completely gone, and he's like, 'What do you mean?' And I was like, 'I'm going to dress up like you and dress up like The Undertaker, and do battle raps back and forth and make fun of each other'. And he's like, 'I don't understand. But go ahead.'
"And now when I watch it back, I cringe a little bit, because I go, 'Oh, yikes!' I think I can do a better battle rap video now, and I actually feel bad about some of the stuff that I said. I was at Miz's New Year's party, and this was a year or two or three ago, and everyone asks about when you're returning to WWE. And I was like, 'Yeah, I think I have a good relationship with WWE. I'll probably go back'. Miz goes, 'Oh, you know what? Hunter keeps bringing up that battle rap video.' He goes like, 'Didn't Morrison do some battle rap video where he's burying me and 'Taker?' And until I heard that, I didn't think it was even a thing. I would've thought he would've been too busy to even realize that."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Behind The Lights with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.