AJ Styles pushed back on a story that has followed his final bout with John Cena, telling Chris Van Vliet on Insight that Cena did not script the whole thing on the fly. Asked directly whether Cena called the entire match, Styles was flat about it.
“That is not true. No, not at all.”
By his account, Cena handled only the start, and from there the two veterans worked on trust. It’s a notable clarification given earlier reporting that framed the entire match as Cena-called.
A Match He Says Was Never His To Have
Styles maintains he was not the planned opponent for Cena’s run at all, calling it a decision that came from Cena himself. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to wrestle him. I don’t care what anybody says. That was a John Cena call. There was never any talk of me having a match with John. I just assume I’m not that guy.”
He described how Cena’s custom introduction that night landed with him. “He took the time to make me feel like I was a star, not just AJ Styles, but AJ and John Cena in the ring at the same time, and I’m just as big a star as he is. It makes your heart melt.”
Still Unsure He Counts As A WWE Guy
The bigger theme running through the interview was Styles questioning his own place in company history. Even after a Hall of Fame nod, he isn’t sure where he lands.
“I don’t know. Is that up to me, or up to the fans? Maybe there isn’t one. I think about this all the time, was I even a WWE guy? You never really see AJ Styles on lists of the greatest WWE stars.”
He’s made peace with where his strongest legacy sits. “The legacy in WWE is just not as great as the one in TNA. Not because the wrestling or the guys weren’t great, it was just the time in which I was in TNA.” Styles remains a defining name for that promotion, a status underlined by his return to TNA at Slammiversary.
AJ Styles and Tony Giles host the The Phenomenally Retro Podcast, a weekly video show dedicated to retro video games, professional wrestling, and more.
