The history between Rhett Titus and Austin Aries goes back over 15 years as Aries was the man who trained Titus.
Going back to the first day of training, Aries pulled a rib on his new student, who believed learning a piledriver was something everyone did on the first day.
"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," recalled Titus on Tommy Dreamer's House of Hardcore podcast.
Aries and Titus had their first singles match at NWA Hard Times 2, facing off in a NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title Tournament Qualifying bout.
Speaking about the match, Titus said, "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."
Aries was victorious in the bout.
At ROH FInal Battle, Titus captured the ROH TV Title, winning a fatal four-way bout that featured Dalton Castle, Joe Hendry and Silas Young. You can find Rhett's comments on winning the title by clicking here.
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