AJ Styles says he originally planned to retire at WrestleMania 41
AJ Styles says he’d originally planned to retire after WWE WrestleMania 41.
On Friday, WWE posted a vlog featuring Styles backstage at last month’s Royal Rumble, which was potentially his final match, as well as footage from shows leading up to the event.
Styles revealed that his original plan was to retire at WrestleMania 41, but he had just returned from an injury at the time and didn’t feel right retiring after only a short return.
“Everybody wants to retire at the WrestleMania, right? The biggest show of the year that we do and I was gonna do exactly that.”
Styles suffered a Lisfranc injury in October 2024 that kept him out of action until February 2025.
“It just didn’t feel right to come back for two months just to retire. It didn’t seem right and I thought what better way to be able to leave on the pay-per-view where you debuted?”
Styles also spent some time in the video talking about his relationship with CM Punk, who was his opponent on the go-home edition of WWE Raw before the Rumble.
“We are living proof that live and learn, forget, forgive, move on. Life’s too short to be angry with each other over stupid things.”
“Me and Punk don’t think on a lot of the same things, but that doesn’t separate us from being friends and being appreciative of each other.”
There will be a celebration of AJ Styles’ career on Monday’s edition of WWE Raw, which will take place in Atlanta, Georgia.
WWE’s video is available below.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.