During a Twitch stream last year, AJ Styles talked about how he felt former RAW Executive Director Paul Heyman played a role in Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson being released from WWE. Here is what Styles said at the time:
“It came down to Money in the Bank, I found out that my guys were getting released, I was upset. I wanted to go talk to Vince, but it’s already in motion and already been done. Paul Heyman pulls me into his office and tells me he had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it. If he knew Gallows & Anderson were getting released, he would have fought for them and that’s why they didn’t tell him they were getting released. I said, ‘Okay, I appreciate that, it makes a lot of sense.’”
“It was later, I told a friend what was said and he told me what he knew, which is that Gallows & Anderson weren’t on the list, but Paul Heyman spoke out abundantly like ‘we gotta get these guys out of here. We don’t need them, they’re getting paid too much.’ The one thing Paul Heyman is good at is talking, he’s very convincing. One thing led to another, Paul advocated to get them released. Their name wasn’t on the list until Paul brought it up. I think the reason why he did what he did, well, he’s just a liar, but it’s because he knew he had nothing we wanted to do with them. He didn’t want to get them to the next level or do anything for them. The best way to do that after what he said, was to get them out of there.”
In an interview with ITRWrestling.com, Heyman addressed the matter:
“In terms of what AJ Styles said regarding the departure of Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, I am still of the old school belief—that I would suggest is also a new school belief—what goes on behind those closed doors, in those creative meetings, as far as I’m concerned, is privileged conversation. It’s not for public consumption. Triple H had a very interesting analogy the other day that he and Stephanie love to take their kids to magic shows and that the kids are fascinated by the magic that happens in front of their eyes, despite the fact that they understand it’s a trick. And even though you know it’s a trick, no one wants to see the wires that lift the magician up in the air and bring the magician back down, and I really enjoyed that analogy.”
“Whatever you think of sports entertainment, I’m not here to expose the wires, so whatever happened between Gallows and Anderson happened behind the scenes, behind closed doors in a meeting that I’m not going to expose to the public because it was an inner sanctum meeting with the chairman of the board, Vincent Kennedy McMahon. And unless Vince wants to talk about it publicly, I’m not going to be the one to expose what happened, why, and what the other conversations were in that meeting.”
