AJ Styles’ wrestling career looks to be over following the WWE Royal Rumble Premium Live Event on January 31, where he lost a Career Threatening Match to Gunther, drawing his 27 year career to a dramatic close. However, wrestling retirements aren’t known for being permanent and the world has not stopped talking about whether Styles will get back in the ring, and more importantly, which company it will be for. WWE Hall of Famer Booker T talked about Styles’ retirement on his “Hall of Fame” podcast, stating that he didn’t see the ending to the Styles/Gunther match coming, but what he does see coming is another match for “The Phenomenal One.”
“The one thing that kind of leaves the door open is AJ didn’t leave his gloves in the ring,” Booker said. “If you’re retired, if you know it’s over, you’re going to leave those gloves in the ring. So therefore, I think the door was left open slightly anyway for AJ to still be able to do something , even if it’s not in the WWE. I could be wrong.” Booker noted that Styles dedicated a lot of his career to TNA Wrestling and that he could see Styles wanting one last run there, while also admitting that he would have likely wanted to wrap his own career up in WCW had he had the chance.
As for a career outside of the ring, Paul “Triple H” Levesque stated after the Royal Rumble that he would love to offer Styles a backstage role in WWE, which is something that Booker would love to see Styles take up. “I can see AJ being in this business a long time, just because he’s one of those carpenters that we really, really, really truly need right now to help these young guys kind of like navigate their way through this, you know, this landmine. I’m serious, and hopefully we can get somebody like an AJ Styles as far as…I wouldn’t want to see him as a producer or anything like that, but I would love to see AJ Styles as one of the trainers and one of the coaches.” Booker rounded off by saying that he is 100% confident that Styles will wrestle again, he just isn’t sure when or where.
Please credit “Hall of Fame” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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