AJ Styles can boil the entire wrestling business down to one sentence, and he borrowed it from a former Brood stablemate. On The Phenomenally Retro Podcast with Tony Giles, Styles pointed to advice from Gangrel that has stuck with him for years.
“Gangrel said this: meaningful moves make moments, moments make memories, memories make money. That is the wrestling business. People don’t remember the matches, they remember the moments. That moment could be played for years. He’s 1,000% correct.”
The Longevity Puzzle
Styles marveled at Chris Jericho’s durability, admitting he can’t crack the code on his own body, let alone someone with an even longer mileage log.
“I wish I could figure out my own body. How did I go to bed and now my neck is all jacked up? I wish I knew how he was doing it. And it’s not like this guy wasn’t taking big bumps. His bump card, I’ve got two decks of cards, is all I can tell you.”
Passing It On
Now working with younger talent at the WWE Performance Center, Styles sees his role as adding a little something extra without overwriting the system.
“I get to give my own two cents to these young guys. I may screw everything up, I don’t know. I’m the substitute coach, I guess. I’m going to throw my own little flavor in there. Not so much that they don’t know what the heck we’re doing, but enough to make it a little different.”
Styles was also honest about the limits of a performer’s control, recalling how fans simply refused to accept him as a villain no matter how hard he pushed.
“Some fans aren’t going to let them be heels. As hard as I tried, nobody really seemed to buy it, and I tried to be a nasty, aggressive heel. They just wouldn’t let it happen.”
He wrapped his industry talk with a case for a crowded wrestling market, arguing that rivals sharpen the whole business.
“Competition, I’ve always believed, is healthy. When WWE were the only game in town, wrestling had never been so stale. It’s genuinely why I started watching more independent wrestling, more Japanese wrestling.”
