https://youtu.be/ccKowGpp4mk
AJ Styles recently spoke with our friend Ryan Carse of The Tag Rope, a quarterly pro wrestling magazine. The Phenominal One spoke about a wide range of topics, including his time wrestling in Japan, early memories of breaking onto the independent circuit, thoughts on Shinsuke Nakamura and much more. Here are some highlights of what he said about:
Returning to the independent circuit after leaving TNA:
“I tell you what’s liberating, is the fact that you were able to bet on yourself, and it paid off. A lot of people wouldn’t do that, there’s a lot of chance you’re taking when you do something like that but it’s very liberating to feel like, ‘Okay, I did that, and I did it all on my own, and I created a new AJ Styles and separated myself from something that people only knew me as TNA AJ Styles’. Now they knew me as Bullet Club AJ Styles, which is hard to do and I was very happy that I was able to do that.”
The most important thing he learned in Japan:
“Just because people weren’t making a lot of noise doesn’t mean they weren’t paying attention. The Japan crowds are very different from the UK and American crowds; they’re really paying attention, watching and loving professional wrestling for what it is. The pure sport that it is. You gotta love that. There’s a lot of respect in Japan and you don’t realise it and first, but then you just really love it once you get to know what’s going on.”
Which Japanese wrestler he learned the most from:
“Wrestling [Hiroshi] Tanahashi, I really feel like that I learned just because I don’t see what’s going on, doesn’t mean he doesn’t. Sometimes, I don’t feel the crowd or I don’t see them so I can’t see the reactions because I’m in a hold or he’s in a hold. But there was a time when I had him in a Calf Killer for what seemed like, ‘Oh man, this is too long’, but he saw something I didn’t, and literally we had people crying in the front row.
Shinsuke Nakamura:
“First of all, Shinsuke’s awesome. He’s his own wrestler, there’s nobody like him, he’s very unorthodox but he’s his own man. You won’t see another wrestler and go, ‘Shinsuke copied him’, that’s not it. If anything, you could say he does a little Michael Jackson stuff, which makes him so different from everybody else, he’s flamboyant; this guy has all the tricks of the trade. At the same time, he will kick your head off.”
