Wrestling retirements almost never stick. There are exceptions, but there are far many more who retire, come back, rinse and repeat that cyclically like it were their laundry. Hall of fame inductions are never indicative of an unflappable decision toward definitive retirement. Somehow, with AJ Styles, it feels different. It feels definitive and true, as though he were content with his life and his body of work, as someone who was never supposed to make it this far.
That’s always been the way he’s carried himself; approached wrestling. If you were to do some digging around about AJ Styles, you’d find out he was once offered a spot in TNA’s Hall of Fame a little over a decade ago after they had already experienced a falling out. He has actually been offered a spot twice at this point.
Think on this for a moment. Granted, TNA was in the midst of one of its many dumpster fire phases, but there was a moment where TNA felt they had no further use for him on their programming. They undervalued Styles, who I think we can all agree personified the TNA branding. Despite that, by his own admission, he was offered a contract around 2014 that would have reduced his salary by around 60%.
“Yes, thank you for all of your service. Here’s a generous participation pension, we’d like to keep you around as a greeter,” essentially sums up the state of their relationship. I perceive that as TNA and that management team not deeming Styles worthy of even what he was previously earning, and instead lowballed his contract, which together I’d characterize as blatant imbecility. I think if you can rub two brain cells together and have ever watched how pro sports teams deal with athletes they want to move on from, their intentions should have seemed eerily obvious.
“But gosh darnnit, you wanna be in our hall of fame?”
Styles was offered a spot in the company’s hall about a year after he left. This would have been accompanied by one final match in TNA. As the story goes, Styles rejected the offer, and argued that he didn’t want to be in any Hall when he was still actively competing, and specifically in 2015 because he had returned to ROH, established himself in NJPW as a two time IWGP champion and felt it would be disrespectful to do so while under contract elsewhere.
Years passed and Styles earned his way into WWE. About eight years into his run with WWE, TNA came calling again about a HOF induction. Styles again rejected the offer because, as before he didn’t want to while still desiring to actively compete, and felt it would also be disrespectful to WWE. So he declined again for the same reasons as 9 years prior.
This is all relevant because Monday’s Raw crystallized Styles’ wrestling future. WWE’s AJ Styles Appreciation Night on Raw concluded with his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, an honour he appeared all too keen and ready to embrace. The face and eyes don’t lie, and if you were looking for it, you know his retirement was final. Coupled with him leaving his vest and gloves in the ring, AJ Styles is seemingly 100% done with professional wrestling. With nothing more to prove to himself, he’s going home with his family. He’s earned that.
The moment couldn’t have been scripted any better. In his home state, near where he grew up, with his wife and kids there with him, the entirety of segment read as a final goodbye between us and him. Whether you found him in WCW’s dying days, or in TNA and ROH, or while he was running Bullet Club en route to a decade-long WWE run, his success is deserved and his accolades are barely a measurement of his overall impact in the wrestling space. If this is truly his final bow — no revenge match against Gunther, no return to TNA and definitely no debut in AEW — then his legacy in the ring is inalienably untouchable, and his ending was penned the way he wanted it to be written. If that’s his choice, then we need to respect that… even if for that brief moment you thought maybe Undertaker and Styles might lock up for one more round. If all of that is true, and his decisions have been governed by his desire to maintain a legacy built off hard work and respect without diminishing his body of work, then his legacy will live on in the people he worked with, the people he inspired, and his children.
I think it’s important to let him go here. He will surely be back in some capacity behind the scenes because for the last several years that’s what he’s talked about if not his family; he has a want to give back, and also be there for his kids at home. He could have left WWE, but chose not to. We need to let him go without conversations about “what if” matchups he’s frankly mostly already had in his prime in between his TNA and WWE runs. You can find them on YouTube.
AJ Styles has been afforded the ability to leave on his own terms, leave at his own pace, and to go out with the admiration of his peers, with his long time friends in attendance, and with his family at ringside to walk with him into the horizon.
So, if this is it, what is his legacy?
I think the answer to that question is simple. Beyond the accolades, Styles walked a path few have been able to successfully experience. He blazed a path through his athleticism, creativity and willingness to shoulder the big responsibilities. He led by example, and those lessons have shown the wrestlers of tomorrow how to carry themselves, and more importantly that with hard work comes possibility. Certainly people came before him that highlighted the value of smaller wrestlers like Shawn Michaels or any one of WCW’s cruiserweights, but to me, it was him and the other mainstays of TNA that truly rubberstamped what has become the prevailing workrate-based style employed today.
AJ Styles was the embodiment of hard work paying off. He is and will continue to be the measuring stick to a generation for what an apex in-ring worker looks like as someone who broke the molds of all notion of possibility. He excelled to the point their work and skills were not only irrefutable but almost inarguably unmatched. This might sound sacrilegious, but for as impactful as WCW’s Cruiserweight division was for fully introducing Lucha to the North American market, I would argue AJ Styles and his work alongside the X-Division roster in early TNA set the tone for what fast-paced workrate should look like in the 21st century. There’s a reason why he is so respected; he worked hard, didn’t cut corners, and earned his spot everywhere he went simply by grinding. His output and value are undeniable.
Without AJ Styles there’s no telling how someone like a Will Ospreay or Seth Rollins develops. That’s the present and future of wrestling, who are in turn inspiring the next wave. It all connects cyclically. Even though he’s left wrestling in his rearview, the reverberations of the noise he made have helped direct the evolution of the entire business.
I’m reminded right now of a Canadian music artist named Matthew Good. Quite a few years ago he published collection of short stories in a book and titled it “At Last There’s Nothing Left to Say.” As I’m winding up what will probably be the last thing I ever write about AJ Styles — save for our own HoF inductions that I’ll be clawing to write when the time comes — I’m reminded of that title as I think back on his last match. As I rewatched his Iron Man matches with Christopher Daniels, or his matches with Finn Balor, or his matches in NJPW with Tanahashi and Okada. I can’t help but look back on the years I spent watching him, coming back to watching him and seeing how he’d evolved all for the better. It’s a matter of simply being grateful to have watched him for so long, to the point I have nothing left to say to him, or about him, other than a humble thank you.
The post A fitting epilogue to a Phenomenal career appeared first on Wrestling Headlines.
