– Austin Aries final interview as a WWE employee is featured on the latest episode of the Pro Wrestling Illustrated Podcast. Aries, while promoting his new book “Food Fight,” talked about critics of the WWE cruiserweight division.

Here are some highlights:

His wrestling bucket list:

“I don’t have a bucket list… Right now, I’m just focused on this book. It’s a new endeavor. I’ve got a great platform and I want to use it to spread an equally important message. Listen, I can sit and talk wrestling all year. I’ve talked about it for a decade. And it’s cool, but I want to talk about this book and I want to talk about the importance of what we put in our bodies multiple times a day.”

His thoughts of WWE’s cruiserweight division:

“I’ll leave the criticism to the critics. I’ll leave that for the people who are paid to make those decisions. My job is to go out there and perform and—whatever job they give me to do—to do it to the best of my abilities.”

Looking back on when he nearly walked away from wrestling in 2011:

“Sometimes when you’re in the situation, it’s hard to evaluate it. Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a step back and get a little bit of a different perspective and re-evaluate things. For me, I’m smart enough and have been around the business long enough to know you don’t really retire.”