During a recent episode of the “Insight” podcast, AJ Styles opened up about his time at TNA and the reason several wrestlers exited the company around the same period. In his own words, he stated,
“They recruited Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. My belief is that Eric’s intent was genuine, to see exactly where we as a company stood in terms of gaining increased viewership as we were expanding. Alas, things did not pan out as planned. We lost a considerable amount of money. I recall being quite irked with Hogan at the time, feeling ‘why doesn’t he mention TNA? Why isn’t he helping promote us? There’s absolutely no advertising coming from him.”
At that time, Styles was rather upset. However, upon reflection, he considers Hulk Hogan was likely too mortified to associate publicly with TNA, a considerably smaller franchise compared to WWE. He voiced this observation as,
“I think Hogan found it rather shameful to discuss about that, so he refrained from doing so. I presume Dixie Carter was trying to make some strategic moves, but they kept conflicting, ultimately leading to a collapse. When it collapsed, they lost massive sums of money. Following this loss, they expected me to agree to a decrease in pay. It was then that my contract ended.”
In 2014, Styles ended his alliance with TNA, moving on to become a part of New Japan Pro Wrestling shortly. He was onboarded by WWE in the early stages of 2016.
Since his association with WWE, Styles has proved to be an essential player within the company, with multiple WWE Champion and Grand Slam Champion titles under his belt.
Styles made his post-injury comeback during the 2025 Royal Rumble pay-per-view event and was subsequently transferred to the RAW roster.