At time of writing, we are 1 day away from Impact Wrestling's Bound For Glory 2018 event. The main event sees the reigning World Heavyweight Champion, Austin Aries, defend his title against a modern-day wrestling legend, Johnny Impact. We were lucky enough to be given an opportunity to chat with him ahead of his title shot.
RB: This Sunday you’ll be facing Austin Aries for the Impact Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship at Bound For Glory, as someone who’s followed your career since Tough Enough, it’s genuinely gratifying to see you headlining Impact’s #1 PPV for the World Title. What are your thoughts going into this and how have you prepared for this match?
Johnny Impact: "As far as how I prepare for it, it’s been similar to how I prepare for every match. I’ve been studying some Austin Aries tapes, I’d faced him once previously and he surprised me so I’m going to be better prepared this time. Austin Aries is champion for a reason, he’s very talented in the ring and the only thing he’s better at than wrestling is being an asshole.
With regards to prepping for Bound For Glory, my typical regiment is two days in the gym, some physical training - MMA, parkour, boxing, something like that.
What’s pushing me about Bound For Glory is Austin Aries’ decision to make this personal in addition to this being about the title - I’ve been after the Impact World Championship since I got to Impact but for some reason it’s eluded me - anyway Austin has a complex about being short. I tweeted a joke in a reply to something Impact had posted that said “Johnny Impact stands tall over Austin Aries, a foreshadowing of what’s to come at Bound For Glory?” and I said “Haha, when does anyone not stand tall over Austin Aries?” and it really upset him. He stewed over it for a couple of hours then tweeted out something about Taya which was a bit of a low blow to me because that was not something that Taya was expecting - she’s not involved in the match and it made me take the focus of the match from being about winning the World title to being about teaching Austin a lesson. He can say what he wants about me and we can settle all that in the ring but it’s not cool saying something about somebody’s wife."
RB: You’ve held countless titles in countless promotions and faced various legends across your career. How does this match stack up in terms of importance to you?
Johnny Impact: "It might be a little cliche to say but the saying is “you’re only as good as your last match” and that couldn’t be more true right now because everything that I’ve done previously, everything that I said over the past several years has been leading up to this moment. Winning this title proves to myself that what I’ve been doing is worthwhile. If I don’t then I’m going to have to take a good look in the mirror and figure out how to carry on doing this, so as far as how important this is - it’s the most important match I’ve ever been in."
Impact Wrestling presents Bound For Glory, Sunday the 14th October which can be viewed live for UK fans on FITE.tv - https://www.fite.tv/watch/impact-wrestling-bound-for-glory-18/2obik/
Comments