AJ Styles has explained why his Hall of Fame speech was so short.
A lot of fans were critical as the Phenomenal One delivered the shortest speech of the night during his Hall of Fame induction in April this year. Many compared it to Stephanie McMahon’s long opening speech of the night and blamed the company for holding the show after SmackDown, the night before WrestleMania.
During a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, the former World Champion was asked if he was given a length of time to work within for his speech. AJ Styles explained that he was not told anything like that, and claimed that his speech went exactly as it was supposed to:
Never said anything to me, and you know what, it happened exactly the way it was supposed to. Stephanie’s was amazing, of course, she was a big part of WWE, and so her speech should have been exactly the way it was.
It was really, really good. I think she spent a lot of time on that one, making it perfect. It was so good, and so there was no competing with that, but then me going out there, being last, big deal to me, but also taking into consideration what everybody had done that day. I just tried to make it heartfelt.
Elsewhere in the interview, AJ Styles also talked about his goodbye speech in his hometown of Atlanta following his retirement match. The wrestling veteran revealed that one of his close friends told him that his original speech sounded like it was meant for Hall of Fame and encouraged him to speak from his heart instead. Styles noted that he had no idea that The Undertaker was coming out at the end to announce his HOF induction.
