YMMV / Austin Aries

• Base-Breaking Character: The general consensus on Aries has always been “great talent, bad attitude”, and how much you like him typically depends on whether you think the former outweighs the latter.
• Fan Nickname: In light of his match against Eli Drake, "The Belt Collector".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2011, he was asked to provide voice work for an original character named Jacob Cass in WWE '12, whilst under contract by TNA. A bit over five years later, Aries would make the jump to WWE under their developmental show NXT.
• Never Live It Down: Unfortunately for Austin Aries, the moment where he no sold the Starship Pain at Bound for Glory and immediately got up from it after the three count to ruin Johnny Impact's moment has given him a permanent reputation as an egotistical primadonna who's difficult to work with and can never be trusted to be a professional when it counts the most.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The Bound for Glory incident has completely overshadowed everything he's accomplished, as it permanently characterized him as another wrestler whose arrogance and ego has completely ruined their career.
• Vindicated by History:
  • His seventy five minutes with Bryan Danielson at Testing The Limit. Not only did the audience look more exhausted than the wrestlers at the end of the match, Aries looked completely inferior to Danielson in every way except topes, causing people to call him over pushed and overrated, having not wrestled ten matches for ROH beforehand. Overtime, Aries winning a seventy five minute match was what stuck in people's minds.
  • In hindsight sadly, WWE's decision to not push Austin significantly and to not give him the Cruiserweight Title during his brief run may have been justified come his notorious no-sell glory hogging at Bound for Glory. Giving the belt to a man who is so high on his ego like that wouldn't have worked in the long run (certainly didn't for Enzo Amore).
  • His first TNA World Heavyweight Championship run didn't last too long, being barely over four months before he had to drop it to Jeff Hardy. While seemingly unfair at the time, his later behavior in his career, especially during the Bound For Glory incident, can put things in a new perspective. While Jeff certainly has his own share of well-documented issues, TNA management during that time might be more vindicated in their decision to have Aries drop the title. Because during that time, the only thing the audience of wrestling fans saw was what's on their screen and maybe some dirtsheets on the internet. However, the writers and managers of TNA actually worked with Aries backstage and it's highly likely that in all this time, they saw something there with his character or behavior that the rest of us didn't.