X-Pac opens today’s show by speaking about the arrival of ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy in WWE. He says he was quite excited to see Hardy finally debut this character in WWE, and he’s a huge fan of it. He informs that he spoke with Hardy recently, and they laughed over him admitting to being concerned about Hardy when he saw the initial tweets and videos from TNA. X-Pac thought Hardy had legitimate lost his mind.

X-Pac says he’s intrigued to see what Don Callis (formerly WWE’s Cyrus) can bring to the table as co-Executive Direction of Impact Wrestling moving forward. He adds that he knows the value of Scott D’Amore as he’s been a big fan of D’Amore for a long time, but he’s curious to see what Callis can accomplish in this role.

Commenting on the news that The Rock is receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later this month, X-Pac says that it’s “bullshit” that The Rock and Vince McMahon are the only two wrestling-related personalities who have received stars on the Walk of Fame. Other stars such as Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Steve Austin do not have stars on the Walk of Fame.

X-Pac welcomes Austin Aries to the show.

Aries says he had a great time performing in his hometown for a recent House of Hardcore show. The show had a good turnout and he thought the wrestlers put together a great night of action. He also mentions that the show drew nearly 500,000 views on Twitch which was a huge increase from the 160,000 views they had on the last show.

X-Pac asks Aries about the terrible ring they worked in during their recent tour of Australia. The promo that Aries cut after the match in which he criticized the ring ultimately garnered him a lot of attention online. He says that the ring didn’t have canvas on it which made it very slippery to work in. The padding was also uneven in the ring and some parts of the ring didn’t even have padding, resulting in him busting his eye open at one point.

He admits to being very upset when he was cutting that promo after the match and he thanks X-Pac for cluing up the segment after he stormed off to the backstage area. He says that a lot of the local talents thanked him after the fact for saying a lot of the things that they’d been thinking for quite some time.

Aries informs that when he was released by WWE he had some restrictions in terms of a no compete clause, but he was focused on getting healthy at that time anyways so that time off helped him in that sense. He was actually in talks with Impact Wrestling about a potential return there, but he wants to be in a position of power if he returns to that company because he knows there’s a lot of work to be done there.

After working the indies for a while now he’s not sure if any company can pay him enough money to sign an exclusive contract, because he’s really enjoying having full control over his schedule as well as creative control over matches.

Aries mentions that he sometimes gets frustrated with writers or backstage officials who think they’re better than he is, just because they’re able to sit first class on a plane or because they have some control over what his character does on television. He points out that it’s the wrestlers who are busting their ass every night of the week so the writers can have jobs to begin with. He also adds that he could do a writer’s job any day of the week but none of those guys can do what he does in the ring.

Aries also mentions that while he loves meeting with fans, sometimes certain fans really aggravate him. During his recent tour of Australia he saw the same two guys at most of the shows and they didn’t buy a single piece of merchandise or wait in lines for pictures. When he showed up at the airport to fly home those guys were there waiting for him and all the other wrestlers, begging them to take pictures and sign their binder full of pictures.

Aries declined because he knew that those fans thought they were smarter than everyone else, ambushing the wrestlers at the airport for free pictures and autographs, when all the real fans supported the wrestlers at the shows by buying merchandise.

Aries informs that he was quite nervous prior to his commentary debut in WWE because he knew it was a big opportunity, and he also knew that if he did a good job it would open some doors for him, and it did. He mentions that Vince McMahon and the other Producers rarely spoke to him in his ear while he was working, so he didn’t really have to learn how to deal with that.

Aries admits that he never really settled into working in WWE because things constantly changed for him during his time there. He also wasn’t really excited about his WrestleMania debut, and for the most part he just wanted to get it over with. He says that he actually had to manufacture excitment in interviews leading up to the event.

He thought his match against Neville was fine given the their place on the card and the time they had. He admits that he wasn’t really comfortable as a babyface, and he’s always felt much more comfortable as a heel throughout his career.

That sums up today’s episode of X-Pac 1, 2, 360. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya next week for another recap!