AJ Styles recently spoke with AL.com‘s Ben Flanagan in advance of this weekend’s WWE live event in Birmingham, Alabama; you can read a few highlights below:
AJ Styles looks back at his successful first year in WWE:
It’s one of those things like ‘Oh, wow.’ I hope I’m able to continue kicking tail. Nothing’s going to change. I’m going to go out there and do what I do and keep working hard. It’s hard to look back and reflect. There may be glimpses of ‘Oh wow, I can’t believe that happened. All right, back to work.’ Someone tweeted me about this time last year, the WWE said something on their website about Nakamura, Karl Anderson, Luke Gallows and AJ Styles may be coming to the WWE, and I thought ‘Wow that’s pretty cool. That was a year ago today.’ So I thought that was really neat.
Styles on if the WWE brand split has changed his expectations:
The great thing about it is there are so many options for me because I’ve only been here a year and worked with a certain amount of guys. Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt and all those guys I’m going to have the opportunity to get in the ring with. And Seth Rollins is on that list as well. That’s going to happen. There’s no doubt. At some point this year, hopefully there will be another draft. And whatever happens, at some point, before him and I both retire, we’re going to see each other in the ring. There’s no doubt about it.
Styles comments on getting cheered despite being a heel:
Sometimes I feel like if I’m not getting people to boo me, then I’m not doing my job right. So that’s on me. I need to be better about being the bad guy. And sometimes they just refuse. These fans just refuse to accept me as the bad guy. That has a lot to do with how much time I spent outside the WWE and coming here and doing so well, they respect that, I guess you could say. But it’s up to me to make sure that these fans find a way to boo me. And I think that when you’re in the ring with guys like John Cena where people love to boo him but when you cut a promo the way he did last Tuesday night, you’ve got to love that. You’ve got to love the passion that he presents, and that ultimately makes me the bad guy when someone with that passion comes at you like that. It was a really great moment.
Styles reveals who he most enjoyed working with last year:
I have a lot of great matches in 2016. There are some I was real proud of. With Roman Reigns — and don’t get me wrong, WrestleMania was also a big one, too — but I just felt like my matches with Roman Reigns set the tone of how AJ Styles was going to be presented in 2016, like this guy who gets after it and has great matches with just about anyone on the roster.
