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What's the story?
During his recent interview with Chris Jericho on 'Talk is Jericho' Austin Aries has sensationally claimed that he never asked for his release from the WWE and that instead, they released him because creative had nothing for him following his recovery from injury.
In case you didn't know...
It has previously been believed that Austin Aries asked for his WWE release following reported frustration with how he was being used in the company, which was subsequently granted on July, 7th this year.
It was alleged that he was particularly unhappy with his match with Neville on the Wrestlemania pre-show not making it onto the Wrestlemania DVD because the pair of them missed out on royalties as a result.
The heart of the matter
During his interview Aries opened up on a lot of things - being vegan, joining NXT, doing commentary for 205 LIVE and impressing Vince McMahon, feeling uncomfortable being a face and, of course, how he left the WWE. With the talented independent wrestler revealing that his departure from the company may not have happened how we thought it did.
First of all, Aries clarifies that the WrestleMania DVD, and his match with Neville being excluded, had nothing to do with why he left WWE. He explained that he was paid to promote the Blu-Ray release in Canada via a tweet and merely did it in character.
"There's a tweet I put out, that garnered some headlines, telling everyone that the Wrestlemania 33 DVD was available in Canada on Blu-Ray, unfortunately one of the best matches of the night was left off the DVD.
And so people took that and made it into 'one of the reasons Austin Aries left is because he was mad his match wasn't on the DVD'.
Jericho then asked Aries what was the reason why he left, stating that he received a phone call following his programme with Neville telling him that 'they had nothing for me creatively, we're going to let you go.'
"Long story short, and I can't speak to stuff that I've read, or people have read because those things weren't brought to me personally and I don't like to deal with speculation. So just, plain and simple, I was told that they had nothing for me creatively."
He goes on to further clarify that he never asked to be released and never had a conversation with anyone about leaving. He added that he was happy to rehab from his neck injury at the time and then was happy to do whatever the WWE had planned.
What's next?
Austin Aries has started accepting independent wrestling bookings around the world, as his no-compete clause had ended, but if this is to be believed, there could be a chance that he returns to the WWE at some point in the future as it would seem his exit was amicably done.
Author's take
This certainly changes things for the WWE and Neville's departure from the company. One of the prevailing theories was that there was a problem within the WWE and that several talents were unhappy, with Aries' exit from the company being used as an example. However, it seems that claims of a 'mass talent exodus' may be unfounded with Aries being released by the WWE, and not asking for his release.
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