During the latest House of Hardcore podcast, Rhett Titus told a story of training with Austin Aries.

“Day one, I guess they were feeling us out, and he’s like, ‘who wants to learn pile drivers?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah.’ I didn’t really know there was a certain ciriculum you had to follow and yo had to crawl before you walk, walk before you run. ‘Yeah, sure, Piledriver.’ ‘Come over here.’ He puts my head between his legs and he just proceeds to fart on top of my head. ‘What’s the matter with you? You think you’re gonna learn piledrivers on day one?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Really, you want to learn how to take a Piledriver?’ ‘Yeah, kind of.’ ‘Alright, come over here.’ [fart noise]. Rips ass on me again. ‘What did I just tell you?’ Eventually, we got around to learning piledrivers months later. Not on day one.”

Rhett also recalled facing Austin Aries at NWA Hard Times 2.

“That was a completely amazing experience. They asked him, ‘who would you like to wrestle?’ and he mentioned my name, which was so flattering. It was really cool. He said to me, ‘If you would have told me sixteen years ago that I’d be wrestling you, one of my students, on a NWA pay-per-view now owned by Billy Corgan, I would be like what the hell are you talking about?’ It’s very crazy to think about this. He’s still one of the top tier athletes going today, he just needs a place to show it. I’m glad the NWA is giving him that platform. I was glad we got to wrestle. If you came up to me with all the money in the world and said, ‘pick any wrestler you want to wrestle,’ I would pick Austin Aries because that it the ultimate test to me as a professional because how do I hold up against the guy who taught me everything I know. It was a great experience. He was very happy with it after, I was very happy with it after. I feel the fans were happy.”