AJ Styles is currently one of the most popular and lauded wrestlers in WWE right now, and has carried the Smackdown brand ever since the WWE Draft. But he was the face of TNA for a decade before signing with WWE, and even though he was the most decorated wrestler in that company’s history, he was made to feel pretty insignificant before he parted ways with Impact Wrestling.
During a Q&A at Wizard World Portland on Friday, Styles talked about how he hit a motivational low before he left TNA and his time in Ring of Honor and New Japan helped rejuvenate him and get him ready for WWE.
“Ring of Honor treated me real well, and New Japan treated me like a superstar. So I’ve got to give credit to them, who helped boost my ego a little bit because it was definitely flattened due to TNA’s service. But then — doing all that and then having the opportunity to come to WWE and …you know, whether people like it or not, WWE is easy, the biggest — you know, when it comes to wrestling, it doesn’t get any bigger than the WWE. And being there means you’ve finally made it.”
He also said that when he and Samoa Joe were wrestling each other 10 years ago in TNA, they had dreams of setting the world on fire, but things didn’t quite work out that way. And he made sure to cast some decent shade in Dixie Carter’s direction.
“Joe and I were hoping to make TNA a big deal. You know, that was what we wanted to do. The problem was, the person who owned the company, she didn’t see that in us. She didn’t see us as the stars that put TNA on the map and not just me but like, Jerry Lynn and Christopher Daniels, and Low Ki, all those guys who did great things and she just didn’t see it. Go put it bluntly, she wanted to be WWE-lite and nobody wanted to see that. They wanted to see something different. And at one point in time, it was a great place to work.”
But things worked out for all involved. Now Joe and Styles are setting the world on fire in a whole different company. It only took, uh … 10 years. But still! AJ Style and Samoa Joe would never be this good and this motivated right now without going through the pits first. That’s how things work, right?
(h/t to 411Mania for the transcript)
