AJ Styles spoke about a wide-range of WWE-related topics while chatting about pro wrestling on the latest episode of his “Phenomenally Retro” podcast.
During the show (see video below), the WWE Hall of Fame legend spoke about Sol Ruca’s recent title win, his past press conference brawl with LA Knight, TKO’s affect on WWE, blood in wrestling and WWE’s PG rating.
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 Sol Ruca defeating Becky Lynch for the WWE Women’s Intercontinental Championship: “That was good. That was the right call. I don’t understand why they put that title on Becky [Lynch] in the first place because she lost it within the shortest amount of time. She set a record for 43 days, I think it was. So I don’t quite understand that. But Sol is the right person to have a championship on. I don’t know how long she keeps it because, again, I’m a fan of the chase. The babyface is always chasing the title.”
On his WrestleMania 40 press conference brawl with LA Knight: “No, it wasn’t supposed to be broken up by security. Because we didn’t know, there was no security there to break up a fight. They didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was not a good thing. It’s not what I wanted. So I don’t know how much more I should say about that other than the fact that it wasn’t planned. I didn’t want it to happen like that. I just wanted to remain a heel. But then when LA Knight came over and headlocked me, that’s not good. That’s not a good idea. I was good with walking away and being the heel. Didn’t happen.”
On how WWE fans need to take the good with the bad when it comes to TKO’s big-business affect on the company: “You’ve got to understand, that is their job to take the blame for everything that is going on, and that’s their responsibility. We are the head of this thing, and so we take all the blame. That’s our job, and we have to live with it. But we also, if they do something right, we need to give a praise. With AAA, they did something right. We can praise them for that with other things. Maybe they’ve done wrong, freak it that kind of sucked. We’re entitled to opinions and stuff like that. But at the same time, you can’t be boo-boo face about everything that’s going on because there is some good things that are going on with TKO. It’s not going to be perfect all the time, nobody is.”
On how there is a place in wrestling for blood but how he doesn’t see WWE moving away from PG-rating: “I think there’s a time and a place for a storyline that has some blood in it. I get it. But to say that it will go back from PG to even a PG-13 or whatever it is that the next step is, I don’t know that we do that. I think the young is our foundation. We gotta be able to put shows in other countries as well. They may not like all that stuff. That might not be the thing that they want to see over there. WWE is worldwide. So I think we gotta do with the constraints of having the world involved now to have more people watching. I just don’t see a time that we come out of the PG era.”
Also during the episode, AJ Styles spoke about how it would be “dumb” for WWE not to capitalize on Chad Gable’s momentum right now.
