WWE Hall of Famer AJ Styles appeared on “Insight With Chris Van Vliet,” where he discussed various topics, including the greatest feud he ever had in the company.
Styles said, “The greatest feud? I think the one that got the most eyes was me and John Cena. But the match that I had with Roman was really freaking good. At no point in that match did they go, you can’t wrestle to Roman, because he was freaking bringing it. He was all about, he was in it. I’m not saying it’s me, we had the opportunity to gel really well together, and he was tearing it up. It was awesome. So, there’s a couple guys that I had great matches with. I’m kind of sad that I never get to run that back a little bit with Roman, Dean Ambrose and Jericho and the rest, all these guys who were high-level names in WWE. So there’s a couple feuds out there that are pretty high on my list, you know. Then we, I mean, if we’re not talking about WWE, then we can talk about Tanahashi and Okada. I wish I had more matches with Shinsuke, but then we had Abyss, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle.”
On the planning behind the match:
“Well, it was the opportunity to throw back to every guy that we ever wrestled that meant a lot to us, and that’s all it was. I mean, we didn’t have much of a story, so we had to tell one in the ring. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to wrestle him. I don’t care what anybody says. I don’t know who called it, but I know that I wasn’t in the picture. Something else needed to happen. I don’t know what that was, someone’s gonna have to tell that story, because I don’t know. I’m just positive that I wasn’t the guy that was supposed to wrestle him.”
On if there was a move during the match he didn’t think he would do:
“So, Fade to Black, shout out to Frankie Kazarian. Yeah, and I’ve never done that move before, and I told John, I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do it. He’s like, ‘Yeah, you can. I’m just gonna tuck my face into your butt hole, and it’ll be fine.’ We watch it back, and I was like, ‘Freak, that’s great.’ Even I think Triple H said something like, ‘I don’t know, man. So it turned out to look really good, as far as I know, from what I saw. There was a point in there where they were chanting ‘619, 619’ because they knew what we were doing at this point. So the ref walks over, and he goes ‘619.’ Me to John? ‘No, John’s going to 619 you?’ John’s going to 619 me?! All right. So I sell over there, he gives me the drop toe hold. I heard him go, ‘Stop me before I get to you.’ I didn’t say anything. He goes, ‘Hey, stop me as I go for this.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Stop me before I get to this!’ He yelled. I go, okay. He goes, and I clothesline him. I joke around, maybe if John would have tried the 619, it may have turned into the 61 I’m not sure. So that was just kind of funny to me at that time, but for people to understand what we were doing in that match, once they got the gist of it, I thought it was really cool, and to end it with the tombstone that nobody does was pretty freaking cool, right up to his finisher. I was like, wow, that was fun.”
On Cena’s intro for their match:
“I had no idea what was going on. I knew none of this, and I’m stretching, and I can’t [remember] the words. But [I heard] TNA, I go, ‘Wait a minute, are they talking about me?’ Then I took a step back, and they said more, and I look at John, and then they said, ‘The ace of Bullet Club…’ Whoa, we weren’t supposed to say that! Really cool moment, really cool moment. He took the time to make me feel like I was a star, not just AJ Styles, but there’s AJ and John Cena in the ring at the same time, and I’m just as big a star as he is. That kind of makes your heart melt when you think about it, like this guy thought so much of me that he want to make sure it was special to me too.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
