Austin Aries spoke to the Toronto Sun to promote tonight's Slammiversary pay-per-view in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Aries will be defending his Impact World Championship against Moose.

"We're two completely different cats," said Aries. "He's 6-foot-5, 270 pounds, ex-NFL player. He's four or five years into this, I'm 18 years into this. You can't substitute for experience. This isn't my first main event, this isn't my first pay-per-view main event, this isn't my first big match. This is the biggest match of his career. He's really athletic, you don't play in the NFL for seven years and not be an elite athlete. But that's only one component of what we do in there. He likes to hang his hat on the fact he can fly around like a cruiserweight, but the fact is that's not playing to his strength. He's going to take a risk that's not going to pay off. I'm going to make him pay for it and I'll still be the champion at the end of the night."

Aries shared how rough it was starting out as a professional wrestler, sleeping on his friend's couch and getting $60 giving plasma twice a week. He started off in the Minneapolis market, then decided to branch out to Chicago, Milwaukee, and other territories. After being willing to drive 12-14 hours to shows, Aries started to make enough money to earn a decent living. In fact, Aries stated that wrestlers in the indies can make a good living as well.

"Now it's not just like can you make a living, you can make a good living being an independent pro wrestler  travel the world, take a week off when you want, stay an extra three days in Australia if you want to do it," said Aries. "It's cool to have that freedom and control of your life and enjoy what you're doing and also have the creative output on top of that."

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During his time in WWE, he became a top talent in NXT, which led to a spot on the 205 Live commentating team while recovering from an orbital injury. Aries officially debuted on 205 Live as a babyface, with a mission to end the terror of Neville. Unfortunately, despite multiple attempts, Aries was unable to win the Cruiserweight Championship.

After he was surprisingly released in in summer of 2017, Aries immediately made a statement after his no-compete clause was over by winning the Impact Wrestling World Championship from Eli Drake. Aries lost the title to Pentagon, Jr., but regained it back shortly after, and is now going to defend it against Moose at Slammiversary.

Source: Toronto Sun