TNA Wrestling star Nic Nemeth discussed on Busted Open Radio how former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon was initially skeptical about AJ Styles when he first joined WWE.
Nemeth said, “When [Styles] was coming into WWE, behind the scenes, this is second-hand, but the boss-boss was like [iffy]. The way he saw AJ was he still had that 80s mentality, if you’re six-[foot]-five, okay, I can go with you, you look like the Warlord, whatever the situation is. AJ is jacked, but he’s not six-five. At the time I had heard that because of him having somewhat of a southern twang to his voice, that basically here is like Heath Slater telling a joke and [Vince] is like, ‘Oh, that’s what AJ Styles is? Okay. I can’t even take him seriously,’ because that’s still that mentality from his brain from the 60s and 80s. Like, ‘Oh, he’s not from New York.’ He doesn’t have this accent that we have.”
On Styles winning McMahon over:
“I kind of second-hand and first heard [Styles] was fighting an uphill battle, even already coming here with all his accolades, with everything he’s done, everybody knows what he’s capable of. Whatever he did in his body of work while he was here, which, by the way, is effing fantastic, he won over the boss.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
