Explore the remarkable journey of AJ Styles, tracing his rise to becoming TNA Wrestling's ultimate star. From his early days in the X Division to his defining moments in the main event scene, this video chronicles the unparalleled career of the Phenomenal One. Witness the pivotal matches, intense rivalries, and defining moments that solidified AJ Styles as the face of TNA. Join us as we unravel the story behind his evolution, showcasing the skills, charisma, and dedication that propelled him to greatness in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. If you're a fan of pro wrestling history or AJ Styles himself, this is a must-watch retrospective on the legacy of TNA's greatest star.
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#AJStyles #TNA #Wrestling #Sportskeeda
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Many of you may know AJ Styles for his incredible run that he's still on in WWE, where it only
00:19 took him 5 years to become a Grand Slam champion.
00:23 A lot of times in WWE they're referencing how long it took for someone to get to the
00:28 big leagues, and for Styles they're referencing nearly 2 decades before he was associated
00:33 with the company.
00:34 But have you ever wondered what happened in those 12-18 years before WWE?
00:42 Yes fans, there is more wrestling than WWE, and Mr. Styles was Mr. TNA, one of the best
00:51 wrestlers in the world not signed to WWE for a long time.
00:56 But to TNA Impact Wrestling itself, he was often under looked or just not utilized to
01:03 the utmost potential you think he might be.
01:06 It's Sportskeeda Wrestling, I'm Kevin, get into the comments below and let us know
01:11 your favorite matches and moments with AJ Styles.
01:14 Though some have argued that AJ Styles in TNA Impact Wrestling was never figured as
01:20 THE guy of the company, he may have had the greatest career to come out of TNA and jump
01:26 to another promotion, and was fans choice as the face of the company for a significant
01:31 period of his time there.
01:32 If you were to ask AJ Styles himself, he was never the face of TNA.
01:37 On the Mark Andrews My Love to Wrestling podcast, Styles said "I don't think I was ever
01:44 the guy for them, at least in their eyes."
01:47 With a whopping 18 championships captured in the span of 12 years, let's take a little
01:53 retrospective look at AJ Styles' TNA career and why he never truly became the face of
01:59 the company that was once clear #2 to WWE.
02:04 AJ Styles at one point more than 20 years ago was close to signing a developmental deal
02:09 with WWE, but he opted not to because it would interfere with his wife's college education
02:15 and he eventually found a home for himself in the then newly established breakout promotion
02:20 of TNA.
02:21 He was even signed to an exclusive contract at first, but within the first few major pay-per-view
02:28 weekly events, Styles became the inaugural X-Division champion, being the man to truly
02:34 bring that division of cruiserweights to the map it needed to be put on.
02:39 But to top it off, he even became the NWA Tag Team Champion alongside Jerry Lynn.
02:45 This occurred during the early stages of TNA when they were a weekly pay-per-view product,
02:50 yes, a unique presentation.
02:52 As TNA fought to find its foothold, it would see established names frequent the roster
02:56 and clashes with the fresh faces, with this element seeing Styles defeating Six-Pac, X-Pac,
03:03 for the X-Division title.
03:05 Styles continued to fight his way up the TNA ladder with wins over Ron Killings and Larry
03:09 Zabisco, but on the 33rd total non-stop action pay-per-view event from Tennessee Fairgrounds
03:15 in Nashville, Jeff Jarrett, with that hometown advantage, was able to retain the title over
03:22 AJ Styles, and that title being the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
03:28 His first crack at a world title just wasn't successful.
03:31 Styles would once again work his way up the ladder, tag teaming with D'Lo Brown, getting
03:35 blocked along the way by the Mind Games of Raven.
03:40 Styles began to make moves once again to become the next NWA World Champion, defeating Jarrett
03:45 and Raven in a triple threat match in June of 2003 in Nashville.
03:50 It's worth noting that Styles' impact on winning his world title is also kind of
03:54 limited because it was really about Vince Russo interfering and smashing Jeff Jarrett
03:58 with a guitar.
03:59 Styles' first run with the NWA World Title wasn't that much of a needle mover.
04:03 He did best D'Lo Brown in a best of three series, got revenge, and retained the title
04:08 against Raven.
04:09 Heck, he even beat Dusty Rhodes defending the NWA World Title.
04:14 With the ref bumped down, Jeff Jarrett would smash AJ Styles with the NWA World Title to
04:19 win back the championship in October of 2003.
04:23 A now villainous Jeff Jarrett used all the dastardly tactics and all the assistance he
04:27 could to fend off AJ Styles, and successfully with a guitar smash and the help of Kid Cash,
04:33 retained the title against Styles in December of 2003.
04:36 Double J does it again.
04:39 Styles would make an odd detour into one of those "how can they coexist" tag teams
04:44 with another TNA franchise player, the Monster Abyss, with the pair winning the NWA World
04:50 Tag Team titles while still wanting to be single stars on their own.
04:54 They even had a tables match over who would control the tag team titles.
04:59 Yeah, weird convoluted TNA in the early 2000s.
05:03 Styles got smashed through that table, but the feud ended with Styles getting a world
05:07 title shot off the back of Abyss.
05:10 Despite the influence of Raven and Vince Russo outside the steel cage, AJ Styles once again
05:17 able to fend off Jeff Jarrett's dirty tactics, kicking the guitar out of his hands this time
05:24 inside the steel cage and rolling him up to once again become the NWA World Champion in
05:30 April of 2004.
05:31 Yes, but first comes the spring and an unfortunate summer, with the odds stacked against him
05:37 in the multi-man mayhem of the King of the Mountain match in June, Styles would lose
05:43 the NWA World title back to guess who, Jeff Jarrett at the 100th TNA pay-per-view event.
05:50 Yeah, once again a fleeting flirtation with gold for AJ.
05:55 So what's a lonely AJ Styles to do?
05:57 Well he goes back to the X-Division and recaptures that title from Frankie Kazarian.
06:02 As a fleeting match with Jeff Hardy that doesn't really go anywhere.
06:06 It was during this title reign that AJ got to be a part of the first time ever true let's
06:12 test those no limits style match of Ultimate X.
06:17 That's right, hanging the title by this contraption above the six-sided ring and just
06:23 really letting the cruiserweights be cruiserweights doing insane stuff.
06:28 But it didn't serve the best purpose for AJ Styles as he would lose the championship
06:32 there.
06:33 He would then have a grudge feud with Kid Cash before finding his way back into the
06:38 X-Division title scene in a great six-way championship match with Alex Shelley, Chris
06:42 Sabian, Kazarian and Kid Cash at TNA Impact.
06:45 Yeah, at this point TNA is on TV filming in Orlando.
06:49 The competition in the mid-card of TNA at the time was pretty fierce and it wasn't
06:53 just a foregone conclusion that AJ Styles would get the X-Division championship every
06:58 time he challenged for it.
06:59 P.D. Williams was able to successfully retain it against him at the Victory Road 2004 pay-per-view
07:05 event.
07:07 With the title dangling once again above the ring in the Ultimate X match, AJ Styles would
07:13 get his high-flying redemption defeating Chris Sabian and P.D. Williams to once again become
07:19 the X-Division champion.
07:21 But it was around this time that he would face and meet on television for the first
07:26 time one of his greatest rivals, the fallen angel AJ Styles.
07:31 They would face off in a 30-minute Iron Man match at the Against All Odds pay-per-view,
07:36 with Styles coming out the winner.
07:38 It was around this time in 2005 that AJ Styles was truly being regarded as one of the best
07:44 minute-for-minute, pound-for-pound pro wrestlers in the world and really helping TNA and its
07:50 X-Division stand out as a pure wrestling action-based product, emphasis on total non-stop action.
07:59 Now of course, Styles having great dance partners like Christopher Daniels at the time truly
08:03 helped.
08:04 Ultimate X would prove to be yet another problem for the Phenomenal One as Christopher Daniels
08:09 would get the title from him, once again dangling above the ring in a match that also featured
08:14 Primetime and Ron Killings.
08:17 Styles would once again attempt to ascend the world title mountain with an elevated
08:22 sense of hype at this point in his career, and he would get to headline his first real
08:26 pay-per-view main event, TNA Lockdown 2005, in a six-sided steel cage match.
08:33 But he had a real challenge here to get to that next world title level, and it was the
08:39 Monster Abyss.
08:41 This 6'8", 350 pounds of unpredictable, uncontrollable monster is Mike today described
08:47 on commentary.
08:49 Styles did not disappoint in his first real pay-per-view main event, bleeding red and
08:53 powerbombing a giant on thumbtacks to get that world title shot.
08:58 Styles would once again challenge, guess who, Double J Jeff Jarrett for the NWA world title
09:04 at the Hard Justice Pay-Per-View.
09:07 And who would be the special guest referee?
09:09 Well, yes, the Huntington Beach bad boy himself, MMA megastar Tito Ortiz.
09:15 A bunch of shenanigans, Monty Brown comes in for the pounce but hits Jeff Jarrett, then
09:20 Jeff Jarrett does a low blow in front of Tito Ortiz, and then he gets to do it with him,
09:24 and then Tito Ortiz punches him out, Styles hits the spiral tap from the top rope, everyone
09:29 goes crazy, and AJ Styles is once again the world champion.
09:34 Just when you thought TNA was finally going to go with Styles as their guy, Styles was
09:39 once again bit by the odds of a multi-man title match, the King of the Mountain, yes,
09:45 a reverse ladder match.
09:47 It only lasted a month or so, and once again, Styles would lose the title, this time to
09:52 Raven.
09:53 Are we starting to see a pattern here with TNA and how they treat AJ Styles?
09:58 It's a bit odd that TNA had Styles jump back into the X Division as if nothing ever
10:04 happened like they didn't invest all that time in him.
10:08 The up and down with AJ Styles and TNA would continue with the Super X Tournament in 2005
10:14 where he would go through the ranks defeating Petey Williams, Matt Bentley, X-Pac, yeah,
10:19 and then the tournament final where he would lose to another one of his greatest opponents
10:24 of all time, Samoa Joe.
10:26 That went down at the Sacrifice Pay Per View.
10:29 That tournament final was to determine who would face Christopher Daniels for the X Division
10:34 Championship, and considering that Daniels himself had a little nasty, dusty interference
10:40 in there, it meant that we were going to get a triple threat, the triple threat, Samoa
10:45 Joe, Styles, and Daniels at the Unbreakable Pay Per View.
10:49 Now this match, to many, was the greatest match in TNA history, a match that put them
10:55 on the map, a match that proved they could hang in there and deliver on Pay Per View
11:01 at a level that WWE was doing.
11:04 You need to watch it to understand it, but you aren't going to find many matches with
11:09 this level of psychology pacing speed for 23 straight minutes.
11:15 Three guys absolutely at the peak of what they can do, and believe me, the action did
11:22 not stop in this one.
11:24 The match managed to put all three men on the list of the best professional wrestlers
11:28 in the world at the time AJ Styles cracked the top 10 of the PWA 500 that year.
11:35 Although you could argue that AJ Styles didn't need to become a 5 time X Division Champion
11:41 by winning this match, and that Samoa Joe would have been a bigger beneficiary from
11:46 it, it didn't really matter because the match was so good.
11:49 It was the true glory period of the X Division, with the title changing hands from Styles
11:54 to Joe to Daniels to Joe to Styles to Daniels and you get the drift of where we're going
11:59 here.
12:00 Styles was becoming such a bankable star for TNA, not a main eventer just yet, that he
12:06 was featured not once, but twice on the Bound for Glory Pay Per View that year.
12:11 Eventually Styles learned that some of his greatest rivals could be some of his greatest
12:14 teammates.
12:15 He would align himself with Christopher Daniels to have a really great tag team, seeing them
12:21 chase America's Most Wanted before going after LAX, who they would take the NWA World
12:27 Tag Team titles from at Slammiversary 2006.
12:32 As if you thought he couldn't take the X Division to new heights, well he went and
12:36 did it with the Tag Team division as well.
12:38 Along with Daniels, they would have the first Tag Team Ultimate X match against LAX, retaining
12:45 the titles in that big risky match.
12:48 As if AJ couldn't take the X Division to new heights, he would do that with Tag Team
12:52 Wrestling as well.
12:54 Him and Daniels would defeat LAX for the titles in the Ultimate X at No Surrender.
13:00 The titles would go back to LAX at Bound for Glory 2006.
13:06 Only a few days later, AJ Styles would once again get gold around his waist inside the
13:11 Impact Zone, yes, winning the Fight for the Right tournament and recapturing the X Division
13:18 championship from Chris Saban.
13:22 After getting the XD title back for the 6th and final time, he lost it to Christopher
13:27 Daniels, his tag team partner, once now his rival, and at the next PPV Genesis, he failed
13:33 to get it off CD.
13:35 Interference led to Styles losing to Christian Cage.
13:38 Following this, Rhino, yes the ECW veteran, tried to be a mediator between Styles and
13:43 Daniels, with Styles attacking Rhino and beating him in a series of matches in what would probably
13:50 be one of the most one-sided feuds of his career.
13:54 It was a gory period for Styles, he got his ass kicked at final resolution, against all
14:01 odds, and Destination X, all by Rhino.
14:05 There was a true sense of the elevated stars from other companies coming over to TNA, and
14:11 the homegrown talent of TNA simply not being featured nearly as much, and maybe not getting
14:17 those big wins that were needed.
14:18 This was in place in the 10-man Lethal Lockdown Steel Cage match at the Lockdown event in
14:25 2007, Team Engel that featured Kurt Engel, Jeff Jarrett, Rhino, Samojo, and Sting defeating
14:32 Team Cage, which featured Styles, along with Abyss, Christian Cage, Scott Steiner, and
14:37 Tomko.
14:38 In the aftermath of the defeat at the hands of Team Engel, Styles and Tomko tagged together
14:44 and became TNA World Tag Team Champions.
14:48 Styles looking to elevate his stature would join Kurt Engel's alliance, but things wouldn't
14:54 go smoothly since Styles was accused of having an affair with Karen Engel before she became
14:59 Karen Jarrett.
15:06 To make matters worse, Tomko betrayed AJ Styles, choosing Engel over Christian and Styles,
15:12 and wound up quitting the Engel alliance anyway because of the constant accusations and the
15:17 supposed affair.
15:19 The fallout from the Engel-Christian story, which was an attempt to maybe give Styles
15:24 something to do that didn't involve chasing a championship, really led to a new guard
15:29 versus an old established guard story, reaching the point where Kurt Engel was sent to help
15:35 AJ Styles from an attack at the hands of Booker T, Tomko, and the Dudley Boys or Team 3D as
15:42 they were known by then, only to turn on Styles himself.
15:48 Sting on the other hand tried to stop Samojo from a rampage assault on Booker T, only to
15:54 be given the middle finger himself.
15:56 He would finally snap and turn.
16:00 Apparently Styles and Samojo disrespected the value of the veterans.
16:05 It was a good story because you could see the logic of both perspectives in October
16:09 of 2008, the lineup of Kurt Engel, Sting, Booker T, and Kevin Nash declaring themselves
16:15 the main event mafia with the intention of taking back respect and taking back the business
16:22 from those youngsters.
16:24 To combat this, Styles and Samojo aligned to form the TNA frontline.
16:32 Scott Steiner would end up siding with the mafia instead of the frontline and got names
16:37 like Rhino, Team 3D, Christopher Daniels, Petey Williams, ODB, yes a female representative,
16:43 and quite a few others.
16:44 It was mainly Rhino, Joe, and Styles at the forefront.
16:48 A few months after the formation of the main event mafia, they took out Styles and "injured"
16:55 him for a grand total of 17 days before his big comeback at the Against All Odds pay per
17:01 view.
17:02 And his role there?
17:03 Stealing Booker T's Legends Championship before eventually winning it himself.
17:09 It's got to be one of the rare instances where a superstar stole a title and won it
17:14 too.
17:15 No this wasn't a cash in situation.
17:17 After failed attempts at becoming the TNA world champion, Samojo would turn on him during
17:23 one of the attempts to align himself with the mafia.
17:29 And to add salt to the wound, big daddy cool, not so cool, Kevin Nash won the legends title
17:35 from AJ as well.
17:36 That's right, just when you thought AJ was going to get back on top, he gets kicked back
17:40 down.
17:41 Around the summer of 2009, the main event mafia story reached its conclusion with Kurt
17:47 Angle eventually changing his mind about younger talent while Booker T left TNA altogether.
17:53 Reportedly allowing this time, Styles contemplated retirement, only forced Sting to talk him
17:59 out of it by telling him that he wanted to pass the torch to the phenomenal one.
18:05 In what turned out to be a touching gesture at the No Surrender event, Sting intentionally
18:11 didn't pin Kurt Angle, allowing Styles to capture the TNA world championship for the
18:17 first time in his career.
18:22 Weird booking scenario aside, that was one of the defining moments of TNA's incredible
18:27 stretch before its downfall as fans celebrated a true original becoming a world champion.
18:34 The cracks were there for TNA overall, but they weren't exactly showing in response
18:39 to Sting's selfless move, Styles awarded him a title shot at the Bound for Glory pay-per-view
18:46 that year, where Styles solidified himself above everyone else by defeating the icon
18:53 right down the middle.
18:55 He went on to have a series of successful defenses, even having a triple threat rematch
19:00 against Samojo and Christopher Daniels.
19:03 The next major chapter is when he retained against the Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle
19:09 with the help of Ric Flair.
19:11 This wasn't the usual Styles we were used to, he was turning heel and becoming the new
19:17 nature boy.
19:18 They were trying to literally add Flair to the Styles performer who we knew could have
19:24 banger matches, but some criticized for simply just not having a tangible character that
19:29 maybe mainstream fans could sink their teeth into.
19:33 Flair now teaching Styles how to be the new dirtiest player in the game on numerous occasions
19:38 would help him retain the world title with interference and even paying off a referee.
19:43 After defenses against Kurt Angle, Samojo, Abyss, and Elijah Burke, now going by the
19:49 name D'Angelo De Niro, he lost the title to Rob Van Dam.
19:56 This was a strong time for TNA overall, they had some new management, some new people wanting
20:01 to bet on some new names, but that didn't mean that Styles wouldn't be featured.
20:06 He would have Flair with him form a new group dubbed Fortune, the successors to the four
20:14 horsemen.
20:15 They were called Fortune, get it, the four part.
20:19 Styles would lead the group along with Flair, joining them would be Frankie Kazarian, James
20:23 Storm, and Robert Roode, and their first order of business was to drive EV 2.0, the ECW originals,
20:32 out of TNA.
20:33 Although they had a series of singles wins on their side, and the addition of Matt Morgan
20:38 to their group, they lost the lethal lockdown match to the ECW originals before teasing
20:44 a feud against another group, the Hulk Hogan led group, Immortal.
20:49 That's right, at this point Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff are running TNA.
20:52 Instead of Fortune going at it with Immortal, well, they aligned, you know like their corporate
20:57 ministry and the sight of a 61 year old Ric Flair and a 57 year old Hulk Hogan embracing
21:03 didn't get a lot of love and was something that really just kinda put AJ Styles in the
21:09 background.
21:10 It was probably a good foreshadowing of the downfall that TNA were going to suffer in
21:14 the next of many years.
21:17 This new coalition managed to beat the ECW originals at turning point, sending Sabu out
21:21 of the company.
21:23 But Styles' luck took a turn for the worse when Douglas Williams, now a member of the
21:28 Fortune group, turned on them and captured the TV championship from the Phenomenal One.
21:34 Yeah it was the TV championship, the global championship, but it definitely wasn't the
21:37 world championship.
21:39 The entire story was a bit of a mess, and it was only a few months later when Fortune
21:44 finally did turn babyface, taking out Immortal with AJ Styles declaring that he didn't
21:50 want Eric Bischoff to do to TNA what he did to WCW by taking it all the way down.
21:57 Ric Flair was absent during this period because of an injury and when he returned, he betrayed
22:02 AJ Styles and Fortune and revealed himself to be aligned with Immortal instead.
22:13 Styles would be sidelined for a month courtesy of a bully ray powerbomb from an extreme height.
22:19 He would return at the 2011 edition of the Lockdown event to help Fortune beat Immortal.
22:25 For a brief period he was into it with Bully Ray and Tommy Dreamer for a little while,
22:30 trading wins between all three of them and eventually losing a last man standing match
22:36 to Bully Ray.
22:37 Despite coming off on the losing end, he went after the TNA world title once again, this
22:42 time against Bobby Roode, falling short every time.
22:48 With Frankie Kazarian ditching AJ Styles, it put an end to the Fortune story as we knew
22:53 it.
22:54 Oh, it gets even better!
22:55 On paper, a three way feud with Christopher Daniels?
22:59 Ok, that's worked before, let's add in Frankie Kazarian, this could get interesting
23:03 for AJ Styles, no he's accused of having an affair with the then president of the company,
23:07 Dixie Carter.
23:10 Why did we do this a few years earlier and it wasn't that good?
23:13 You can see the quality of the storylines rapidly deteriorating here, and it's no
23:18 coincidence TNA was in the midst of a big crash when they still have seemingly never
23:24 fully recovered from.
23:25 They're still a strong number two company behind WWE, but they are very much number
23:31 two at a far far distance, AJ is supposed to be one of their top guys and he doesn't
23:36 feel like it.
23:37 Even with the official re-branding of TNA to Impact Wrestling, things didn't change
23:42 too much, but what did change was AJ getting another major ally in the form of Kurt Angle.
23:50 They won the tag team titles at Slammiversary.
23:54 But wait, there's another twist.
23:56 Remember AJ Styles and the Dixie Carter affair thing we mentioned a few seconds ago?
24:01 Well it turns out they were actually taking a drug addicted pregnant woman overcome her
24:06 demons and it even makes no sense whatsoever.
24:11 Why were AJ Styles and Dixie Carter who were work colleagues taking care of a pregnant
24:16 woman together to cover up a previous lie?
24:19 Christopher Daniels said that Styles and Dixie left out one important detail that AJ Styles
24:26 was the father of this woman whose name was Claire Lynch and she had a baby and it's
24:33 not to earn the right to make Claire take a paternity test, we gotta have a match right?
24:40 AJ Styles had to defeat Christopher Daniels in a last man standing match at Destination
24:46 X.
24:47 We're gonna find out who the baby's father is.
24:50 Did Maury Povich book this?
24:52 The results revealed that Claire wasn't pregnant at all.
24:55 No, she faked her pregnancy as a plot with Christopher Daniels, you know, cause he's
24:59 evil to blackmail AJ.
25:02 That still doesn't explain why he and Dixie Carter were taking care of her?
25:06 None of it made any sense.
25:09 Either way, Angle and Styles lost their titles back to Kazarian and Daniels in between and
25:15 they failed to regain them and it just, this was really bad.
25:21 After failing to become the number one contender for the world title, he lost to Christopher
25:25 Daniels and maybe lost his smile.
25:28 He began a rivalry with Angle after not revealing whether he was a part of the new formidable
25:34 faction Aces and Eights.
25:37 And everyone needed to know who was in that faction and AJ was wearing a leather jacket
25:40 and they wear leather jackets.
25:41 Hey, are you with those bad dudes?
25:43 We need to know.
25:44 Although he would lose to Kurt Angle at Slammiversary, he opted not to join Aces and Eights and was
25:50 done with the whole faction thing to begin with cause it didn't work before.
25:56 Taking a spot at the Bound for Glory tournament, he went on to win it and defeat Bully Ray
26:02 to become the TNA world champion again.
26:04 Revived?
26:05 AJ's back?
26:06 He's phenomenal?
26:08 But this time, there was a problem.
26:11 Styles and TNA were in renegotiation stages and it played out on screen with the phenomenal
26:16 one getting into a rivalry with Dixie Carter wrestling as the world champion without a
26:23 contract.
26:24 Somewhat intriguing.
26:25 Okay, they got something here.
26:27 The result of it would be the world title getting vacated with Magnus, you now know
26:33 as Smackdown General Manager Nick Aldis, winning a tournament to crown a new champion.
26:39 AJ Styles returned to have a unification match with Magnus and an interference infestation
26:46 of nearly 10 superstars saw Magnus unify the titles for good.
26:51 This would mark the unfortunate end of AJ Styles' 12 year run with TNA.
27:00 The real life situation of him having a contract negotiation played out in a very messy ending.
27:08 The falling out backstage saw Dixie Carter offer AJ Styles THE TNA original who carried
27:14 the promotion on his shoulders and became Mr. TNA, a contract that was reportedly 60%
27:21 reduced salary.
27:23 This was according to Styles himself.
27:25 It's not difficult to understand why Styles was not happy with this.
27:30 In his own words, "When you've become loyal to one company for that long, you should
27:34 be getting a big pay raise, not a pay cut."
27:39 Thankfully for Styles, the departure was a blessing in disguise as he made the jump to
27:43 New Japan Pro Wrestling and became a two time IWGP World Heavyweight Champion lighting the
27:51 world on fire at the Tokyo Dome, also establishing himself as one of the biggest international
27:57 stars in wrestling at the time and one of the undisputed top wrestlers in the entire
28:03 business.
28:04 Oh yeah, and there was this whole thing called the Bullet Club.
28:08 According to AJ himself, Dixie was a lot more keen on using the established ex-WWE stars
28:16 than pushing them over younger, lesser known names like himself who were the foundation
28:21 of the company, and nobody built the foundation of TNA the way AJ Styles did.
28:27 TNA's loss was AJ Styles' gain.
28:29 In the end, he would sign with WWE and have that massive debut at the Royal Rumble and
28:35 quickly became one of the favorites.
28:38 Even a franchise player for WWE, where if you told me that 20 years ago, I don't know
28:43 if I would have believed you.
28:44 The fact that he's actively referred to as one of the best in-ring performers of his
28:48 generation in WWE and has won every major title there shows you everything you need
28:53 to know.
28:54 But don't let the backstage bitterness and drama deter you from a period in TNA where
29:00 Styles' career truly shined, because whether anybody admits it or not, TNA is the biggest
29:05 reason why AJ Styles became who he is, one of the best in the world.
29:11 What's your favorite AJ Styles match or angle?
29:14 Let us know in the comments below!
29:16 -
29:22 (upbeat music)