Hornswoggle looks back at one of the funnier moments of his career.
The WWE legend dressed up like the Phenomenal AJ Styles on an episode of IMPACT television back in 2020, an extremely fun moment that he recounts during the latest episode of his Going Postl podcast. Hornswoggle begins by revealing that he was originally supposed to do the parody much earlier in the year, but that the creative team wanted Swoggle’s gear to look a little more authentic.
This was supposed to happen at the same tapings that the Hawkins (Brian Myers) match happened (Swoggle said about his appearance as ‘AJ Styles’ on IMPACT). But, literally, Ethan Page goes to the ring — so the day after the Turning Point match with Brian, Ethan Page goes to the ring, and they’re gonna play the A.J. music with me as AJ. So like, ‘Hey, do you have A.J. gloves?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Landon has A.J. gloves.’ I took Landon’s A.J. gloves and they’re like, ‘Well, what are you gonna wear for pants?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I have my hoodie and my pants.’ ‘Well you don’t have A.J. stuff?’ I said, ‘No…’ So they come out, they play it and they play the music, I do the whole entrance and all that and they stop it when I’m at the bottom of the ramp and they go, ‘Yeah, we’re canceling this. We’re gonna do it next episode.’ I talked about it on the Ethan Page interview, where he double birds the cameras and we both get to the back and we’re both so mad because we waited all day to do this, all day, all day! It’s like the only segment either of us had and we waited all day to do it and then they canceled it and they canceled it because they didn’t have gear for it. Well no sh*t. We can’t just make A.J. gear.
Later on the podcast Hornswoggle discusses the actual date that his Styles impersonation did air, and how it was one of the last things Ethan Page did before he went to AEW.
So then, a couple months later, they say we’re gonna do it at these tapings. So they had made me A.J. pants and they found — I’m pretty sure it’s off WWE Shop, the A.J. vest or it might have been a little TNA one. But that and I still have my A.J. gloves. So it was like, okay, this looks a little better, and again, it was cool for me because again, for IMPACT, I get to work with one of my closest friends in Ethan Page and we knew it was his last thing for IMPACT before he went to AEW and not a lot of people knew that so for us, it was pretty, pretty cool, and to be able to do his last thing and I know he holds it in (high) regards too because it’s with his buddy and it’s his last or one of his last things for IMPACT.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Hornswoggle spoke about his release from WWE back in 2016. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)