AJ Styles admits he wanted his WWE retirement at WrestleMania, not the Royal Rumble.
Instead of a grand send-off on the biggest stage in professonal wrestling, Styles hung up his boots following a match with Gunther in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking on WWE’s YouTube channel ahead of the AJ Styles tribute on RAW, the 48-year-old explained what his original plan was.
“Everybody wants to retire at WrestleMania, right? The biggest show of the year that we do, and I was gonna do exactly that, but I just came back from an injury that was supposed retire me, cause of the injury, it retires most.
“But once I got healed up and was comfortable enough running and doing what I needed to do to be AJ Styles, it just didn’t feel right to come back for two months just to retire.
“It didn’t seem right and I thought what a better way to be able to leave on the pay-per-view where you debuted.”
As Styles alludes to, there was some symbolism with his retirement given it was nearly exactly 10 years after his WWE debut.
Gunther and Styles had a banger to go out on and it’s not like when Kurt Angle was saddled with Baron Corbin for his retirement, all due respect.
The Austrian has now retired Goldberg, John Cena and Styles all within the last 12 months kicking his career killer into top gear.
There are many within the wrestling industry that would like to see Styles have a run in AEW before he truly hangs up his boots.
It’s unclear whether he will or he won’t right now, but he has certainly been vocal about wanting to retire for several years now.
