AJ Styles made an appearance on the latest episode of Insight With Chris Van Vliet to discuss a wide range of topics. Here are the highlights:
On if he was approached by WWE while in TNA:
“No one ever really said anything to me, but I’ll tell you, there was an instance. It was a big meeting. Dixie came out and basically said something to the fact of, if you don’t want to be here, we’ll let you go. At that moment, I looked over at Christian to see what he was going to do. This was 2008, 09, 10? I don’t know, somewhere around there. But I was watching him because I looked up to Christian, he’s amazing too. This guy is a ring general, for sure. I was watching him to see if he got up, because if he had gotten up, I would gotten up too. Hopefully he would have gotten me in the WWE or something.”
On why so many people left TNA at once:
“They hired Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. I believe Eric was trying to do the right thing, to see where we’re at as far as getting more eyes on us that we’re growing. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. We lost a lot of money. I think I was kind of pissed at Hogan at the time, because I was like, why doesn’t he talk about TNA? Why is he not helping us? He’s not advertising at all. He never talked about TNA. I was pissed, but I now realize I think he was embarrassed. It was embarrassing to him to talk about that, so he didn’t. I think Dixie was trying to do some things, and it was just they keep butting heads, so it just kind of fell apart, and when it fell apart, they lost a lot of money. When they lost a lot of money, they expected me to take a pay cut. My contract was up.”
