Add as a preferred source on Google AJ Styles believes WWE‘s cutback on house shows is hurting wrestlers’ ability to improvise in the ring.
He discussed it on a recent episode of his podcast, Phenomenally Retro. The Phenomenal One said the lack of regular matches against the same opponents is killing chemistry.
“Here’s what’s hard now. A lot of the older guys would say, ‘Nah, we’ll call it in the ring, kid.’ They could do that because they wrestled so many different people. They weren’t boxed in by time limits either. Now you have to hit your times. Or you’ve already wrestled the guy a hundred times, so of course you can call it. I could call a lot of things. The more I work with someone, it’s just, ‘Hey man, we’ll do what we did here,’ and boom, it’s that quick. But we don’t have live events like that anymore. Guys aren’t getting reps with each other. It’s going to be a lot harder to call. Yeah, we can call the basics. Sometimes basic isn’t very entertaining though. Our job is to be as entertaining as we can. That’s only going to get more difficult.”
“There are a lot of different styles now. It’s not the same. It’s not just shoulder tackles. It’s not headlocks or suplexes or powerslams. It’s not a finish. Guys and girls do so many different moves now. It’s pretty unbelievable. When you think about diving out of the ring and everything else that has to happen, I don’t know if you could do it as flawlessly as they did back then. It was so basic back then.”
That backstage perspective lines up with Styles’ new role in the company. He officially retired on January 31 of this year. He lost to Gunther at the Royal Rumble in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He now works as a coach at the WWE Performance Center. He scouts talent for the company. Guiding the next generation is also part of the job. The former world champion also earned a Hall of Fame induction last April in Las Vegas.