Ace Austin has become one of IMPACT Wrestling’s top homegrown talents. Coming in as a relative unknown, Austin has risen up the ranks to become one of the company’s top crossover stars in the X-Division and in their World Title hunt. Austin has come close to the title on a few occasions, and apparently has been inches away from being booked as the company’s top guy twice.
Austin was the number one contender at the time of Slammiversary this year, but the issues surrounding Tessa Blanchard at the time clouded his status as number one contender. He wound up losing his one on one match with Blanchard, eventually competing in a five-way match at Slammiversary where he wound up losing the match featuring Trey Miguel, Eric Young, Rich Swann, and eventual winner Eddie Edwards.
Ace Austin was a guest on the House of Hardcore podcast with Tommy Dreamer, who is a member of IMPACT’s creative team. During the course of the podcast, Dreamer revealed on two separate occasions, creative almost put the World Title on Austin, which would have made him the youngest World Champion in company history.
“You have twice come so so close to becoming the champ. The first time was ‘he’s not ready.’ The second time it was when Trey got hurt, he got a concussion. We filmed two different finishes with you and Wentz. I told Wentz, from that performance, we got a singles star in Wentz. We were about to pull the trigger on making you the champ and had already put you with Fulton. It was all contingent on Trey being able to come back from his concussion. Trey coming back kind of screwed you from being champ.”
Austin joked about it not being too late to make him the company’s youngest World Champion, as he’s turning 24 on February 28th. The current person with that distinguished honor is Blanchard, who won the title at 24 years, 170 days. We’ll have to see if he sneaks in a win against Rich Swann after Swann teams with the Motor City Machine Guns against Kenny Omega and the Good Brothers.
h/t to Fightful for the quote
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