During an interview with Sportskeeda.com, former WWE and Impact Wrestling star Austin Aries talked about “cancel culture” with the following comment:
“Also being careful not to step on certain lines, because we are really into feelings now and if you hurt someone’s feelings, we talk about the cancel culture, it’s a real thing. As a guy who is trying to offend people and get under your skin, it’s hard now to gauge where that is because if I really offend you, it’s a slippery slope and it’s delicate.”
Aries also commented on the Christy Hemme incident from an episode of Impact Wrestling in 2013:
“I can give you an example and it was the Christy Hemme situation that happened at TNA. This was something that was an on-the-fly moment, she just made a mistake in the ring announcing, but as a heel and I’m offended and I’m upset that she announced us as the wrong names. So I’m in my head thinking, ‘let’s do something with this,’ so I backed her into the corner and made her say it right. Then I stood on the middle ropes and did my pose like I always did. But eventually, it turned into, ‘he sexually harassed her.’ People were legitimately upset online but my thought at the time was, ‘I’m a bad guy doing a bad guy thing, they shouldn’t like that, it wasn’t a good thing to do.’ But it wasn’t Dan doing it to Christy backstage and reprimanding her. It was a heel character doing a bad guy thing but again, people took offense to it online and started to make a lot of noise.”
“It got re-characterized into something it wasn’t and that’s something that has kind of stuck with me all these years and people still make comments about it. It’s unfortunate because you’re doing something spur of the moment with improv, me and her have no issues, we had a good talk afterward, we’re professional, we are good as colleagues.”
