Impact Wrestling is set to officially revert to TNA in early 2024, and one person who will be with the company as it undergoes this change is one-half of the Impact World tag team champions, Ace Austin.
His real name is Austin James Highley, and he has been a part of Impact since 2019. Austin is a former three-time X-Division Champion and a two-time World tag team champion with Chris Bey. He and Bey form ABC, a sub-group of Bullet Club. Austin is very excited for the TNA banner to make its return to pro wrestling.
“There’s just something about the power of three letters in pro wrestling,” Austin told SlamWrestling.net. “For some reason, people really get attached to these three-letter names.”
He believes people have never given Impact the respect it deserves and, in today’s world, he thinks everyone wants a little bit of nostalgia.
“I think that we have worked hard to wipe away any of the bad reputation that the past has put on the company and now we’re ready to take the name TNA and make it something that it was and could be. There’s a lot of promise behind this and now we can take those three powerful letters, TNA, and we can create something positive with it.”
Despite being one of the current tag champions, Austin still sees himself as a singles star and will always prefer competing as an individual. However, he said that is not just him, his partner feels the same way, but they’ve found something that works as a team and know to take advantage of that. Austin thinks it may be an ego thing for him and sharing a spotlight in professional wrestling is not an easy task.
“We’re doing everything we can to just hold each other up and boost each other right now. Neither one of us is trying to step on top of the other and I think we’re doing a great job of really sharing that spotlight. I think it’s working, but yeah, I think the time will eventually come to go back to single stuff and that’s really where I think I excel.”
ABC is not the first team Austin has been part of in Impact, as he previously was in a faction with Madman Fulton. The Austin-Fulton pairing never found much success and Austin believes it was due to a difference in styles.
“I think the dynamic of me and Fulton, a big guy was a little bit more difficult because it had to be a lot of me directing him, him positioning people for me, him picking people up while I did something. With Chris, we get to do a lot of emerging and meshing ideas.”
He tried to further explain. “Sometimes you just find a spark with somebody, I don’t have any regrets in my career, but I never really enjoyed the tag team time that I had previously. And this whole thing falling into place with Chris. I’ve been having more fun in the ring than I ever have because of him.”
Austin and Bey wrestle very similar styles, Austin compared that to the Motor City Machine Guns, Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley.
“We can’t talk about TNA tag team wrestling without the best to ever do it. Everybody always says it seems like they’re one person, they’re such an efficient tag team that they act as one person. Maybe us having to go toe to toe with them so often is a reason that we were able to kind of adapt a similar style just to that meshing of what we do to create just a kind of constant flow, it’s something you can’t really practice.”
ABC did not train together or figure things out before being positioned as a team, they just went out there and it all came naturally. Austin believes that is when you find the most successful situations when you just simply let it happen. Before becoming a team, Austin and Bey were often adversaries in the X-Division.
Facing off against each other so much allowed them to gain respect for one another and also study each other in the ring. “We kind of knew each other’s game going into the tag team thing from an opponent’s perspective. And I think that helped us a lot now that we were able to let go of that competition between us and come together as one.”
In the past, teams would travel around together to build chemistry, however in today’s Impact/TNA product there is not much travel involved. Austin believes that togetherness is missed, but they find other ways to bond and develop as a team. “That time connecting is kind of missing, especially with us living so far apart from each other, I’m based in Ohio right now. He’s based in Vegas. But, anytime we do have independent stuff together or whatever, we make it a point to spend [time] if I go to Vegas, he picks me up at the airport. If he comes to Ohio, I pick him up at the airport.”
Austin says the time they bonded the most was when they got to travel to Japan in 2022 and compete in NJPW’s Super Junior Tag League. “Japan was so awesome. Getting to do that with him, it was his first time out of the country. So, getting to see him experience a new world was great. And just the fun that we had in the ring was really awesome.”
While they were in Japan they spent a lot of time travelling long hours on a tour bus, they also had a lot of late nights playing cards and watching wrestling. That trip helped them bond and Japan is also a special place for Austin because it was there that he joined Bullet Club. In May 2022, Austin was over there competing in Best of the Super Juniors and on the final day of the tournament he was welcomed into Bullet Club.
“I was never a huge Bullet Club fan or anything. So it wasn’t like, I wanted to join Bullet Club because I was a fan, Bullet Club came to me because they recognized me as one of the top promising prospects in professional wrestling. They wanted somebody like me under the banner to further Bullet Club’s legacy. So rather than me going after Bullet Club’s legacy, it was kind of the other way around. Bullet Club looked towards me because of the talent that I possess. That meant a lot to me and that was a really validating factor.”
Austin and Bey are currently the only two members of Bullet Club active in TNA and with just two members in the company, some may think they are not able to showcase Bullet Club’s power. However, Austin believes numbers can be oversaturated and if there were more members people may get lost in the shuffle.
“I think with more numbers, sometimes the waters get muddy, but there is power in numbers and so maybe more than two would be a good idea, but not too many.”
Austin used to spend a lot of time skateboarding and practicing parkour, but he said those things set him up for wrestling and he doesn’t have much time for them anymore. He was also very big into musical theatre and says that is one thing about his life before wrestling that he misses.
Despite not having time for hobbies, he has put a lot of time outside of wrestling into building his life in a lot of ways. He is currently in the process of buying his first home and he is having fun building something that is his own. In his current home, he put some money into building a home gym in his garage and in his new house he plans on doing the same.
“This new place that we just got, I have an even bigger garage. And I’m putting a lot of time and a little bit more money into building my iron paradise, my weightlifting oasis. Getting to just walk out into my garage and have everything that I could need or want is really awesome.”
TOP PHOTO: Ace Austin as X-Division Champion. Credit: Impact Wrestling
RELATED LINKS
- Ace Austin social media: Instagram * Twitter
- Mar. 22, 2023: Chris Bey aiming for No. 1 with a bullet
- Oct. 12, 2020: Ace Austin ultra-confident going into Bound for Glory
- Oct. 29, 2019: IMPACT has an Ace on its side as it debuts on AXS
