New Japan’s Wrestle Kingdom event was almost ‘Phenomenal’ this year as AJ Styles nearly made it onto the show.
NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17 took place on January 4, and saw talent from New Japan, STARDOM, All Elite Wrestling, and WWE compete at the event.
Wrestle Kingdom 17 in Yokohama Arena took place yesterday and featured a tribute to the late Jay Briscoe.
AJ Styles
WWE’s Karl Anderson competed at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4, but the Machine Gun nearly had some back-up at the event.
Fightful Select reports that there was a time in 2022 that New Japan was planning on Styles appearing on-screen at the event.
Rocky Romero told Fightful’s Wrestling Perspective Podcast that the WWE Superstar himself thought it would be a “cool idea.”
Romero added that he believes if it was up to Styles, he likely would have been in the Tokyo Dome.
It was also clarified that there were never any official plans for Styles to appear at Wrestle Kingdom.
Any hopes for the Phenomenal One to appear at the Tokyo Dome ended when Styles broke his ankle the week before the show.
Fightful adds that Doc Gallows also did not make the trip to Japan, which is said to have been a New Japan call.
AJ Styles at Wrestle Kingdom
As part of a crossover between NJPW and TNA Wrestling in 2008, Styles represented the latter at Wrestle Kingdom 2, teaming with Christian Cage and Petey Williams to defeat RISE (Milano Collection AT, Minoru, and Prince Devitt.)
At Wrestle Kingdom 9, Styles would defeat Tetsuya Naito and would unsuccessfully challenge IWGP Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura at Wrestle Kingdom 10 in 2016.
Hours after that match, news broke that Styles had given his notice to NJPW, and he debuted for WWE at the 2016 Royal Rumble later that month.
