AJ Styles at Wizard World Portland: TNA Flattened My Ego

– AJ Styles did a Q&A panel at Wizard World Portland on Friday night and talked about his time in TNA. Styles was asked a variety of questions from fans and the moderator in a couple of them he touched upon his run in TNA.

Talking about his time after TNA and before WWE, he said, “Ring of Honor treated me real well, and New Japan treated me like a superstar. So I’ve got to give credit to them, who helped boost my ego a little bit because it was definitely flattened due to TNA’s service. But then — doing all that and then having the opportunity to come to WWE and…you know, whether people like it or not, WWE is easy, the biggest — you know, when it comes to wrestling, it doesn’t get any bigger than the WWE. And being there means you’ve finally made it.”

Styles was later asked by the moderator in regard to his match with Christopher Daniels and Samoa Joe at TNA Unbreakable whether he ever thought he and Joe would be in WWE ten years later and said, “Well, at that time Joe and I were hoping to make TNA a big deal. You know, that was what we wanted to do. The problem was, the person who owned the company, she didn’t see that in us. She didn’t see us as the stars that put TNA on the map and not just me but like, Jerry Lynn and Christopher Daniels, and Low Ki, all those guys who did great things and she just didn’t see it. Go put it bluntly, she wanted to be WWE-lite and nobody wanted to see that. They wanted to see something different. And at one point in time, it was a great place to work.”

“But I can tell you this,” he added. “I am certainly happy with [making it] to WWE. It is thus far head and shoulders over any other place I’ve ever worked.”

We’ll have more from Styles’ Q&A later. You can also check out a video clip of the Q&A session below.