AJ Styles touched on a lot of current WWE topics during the latest installment of his ‘Phenomenally Retro’ podcast.
Among them were his thoughts on Naraku going to NXT instead of WWE despite being a top star in NJPW, not wanting to get involved in WWE creative and correcting some untrue facts about himself on Wikipedia.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also embedded below is a complete video archive of the discussion.
On not wanting to get involved in WWE creative: “I work for WWE, and I don’t know anything. But that’s not my job. My job is not to know what we’re doing next with that. My job is specific to what is for AJ Styles, and that’s not it. So, I don’t worry myself with it. I don’t need that job, nor do I want to be part of the storyline committee or whatever that is. No that’s not what I want to do.”
On Wikipedia having things about him wrong: “I saw a breakdown of all the matches that I’ve ever had and I’m like, ‘That’s totally wrong. That’s way off.’ You wouldn’t even know. How would you ever know that I only wrestled two matches in ‘99? I wrestled way more than that. There we go. Wikipedia. Let’s see names. Jason Styles. What? I’ve never been Jason Styles. When? Where? Why? So, that’s another thing right there.”
On his thoughts on Naraku making his debut in NXT despite being a successful wrestler in New Japan: “Can I just say this? Shinsuke Nakamura was also in NXT. I’m just throwing that out there. Listen, I think there’s certain things that we all need to learn in NXT, that will prepare us for the main roster. Even I had to learn quick. … It was a learning process and I had to learn quick because I was on there. I couldn’t afford to screw up or mess up or whatever it is you want to call it. I wanted to stay on the main roster and I had to impress the guy in charge. So, we don’t want anybody to go up to the main roster and have to learn like that. I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s better to go [to NXT]. It’s just a smooth transition. You know where all the cameras are. You know, not to turn your back to a camera. A lot of people don’t know that. That was a big thing with me and Stu, our cameraman, he was like, ‘Hey, AJ, make sure you turn this way,’ instead of putting your back to the hard camera. There’s little things that you do that people don’t even think of. You just don’t turn your back to the hard camera. It sounds silly, but I get it. It’s important. So, we have to make sure that Evil, as we’re going to call him, doesn’t turn his back to the hard camera. That he knows where all of them are, how we film and produce. Because you don’t do that in Japan. There’s no producers in Japan. Because it doesn’t matter where the cameras are, they just shoot. They don’t know. At least when I was there, they didn’t know that it was entertainment. It was a sport. So the camera guys were not involved in the booking meetings, whatever, the meetings in general. We need to know where all this stuff is. It’s important. At least I had TNA. Before I had New Japan, I was in TNA. I knew where the cameras were, and I knew to play to the cameras. But still, there’s certain things that we want to have in place before you go to the main roster.”
