AJ Styles says his son, Avery Jones, is not ready for a WWE tryout yet. Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on the Insight podcast, Styles said he hopes his son gets a tryout at some point but is focused on developing his in-ring skills first.
“I hope that he does at some point, but he’s not ready yet. I don’t, my job is to get him ready and teach him the little things that we want to see as coaches. There’s been plenty of guys that even myself have went for tryouts, and they say, ‘Hey, we don’t care about the high-flying moves, we just want to see what you can do.'”
“And I had no idea what they were talking about, and now, being that guy, I get it. It’s the little things in between that we want to see that if you do it well, and that’s the hardest thing to learn, is the in between.”
Styles, who coaches at the Performance Center, said he has talked with his son about the expectations that come with his last name.
“He’s told me, and I get it. And I said ‘Listen, you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to.’ And he’s like ‘Yeah’ but I said ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t have to, you know?’ ‘Yeah, but your dad wasn’t AJ Styles.’ I was like ‘Okay, I get it, I get it.'”
Jones, 19, made his wrestling debut at SCA Wrestling’s Freedom Fling event on June 26, using the Phenomenal Forearm against Ashton Martin.